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A WANDERER IN HOLLAND 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR 

HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS IN SUSSEX 
THE OPEN ROAD 
THE FRIENDLY TOWN 







m 



«i 



A WANDERER IN 
HOLLAND 

BY 

E. V. LUCAS 



WITH 20 ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR BY HERBERT MARSHALL 
AND 34 ILLUSTRATIONS AFTER OLD DUTCH MASTERS 



NEW YORK 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

1905 



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CONTENTS 



PAGE 

Preface xi 

CHAPTER I 
Rotterdam i 

CHAPTER n 
The Dutch in English Literature . * 19 

CHAPTER HI 
Dordrecht and Utrecht 30 

CHAPTER IV 
Delft 4^ 

CHAPTER V 
The Hague . 63 

CHAPTER VI 
Scheveningen and Katwyk 85 

CHAPTER VII 
Leyden 94 

CHAPTER VIII 
Leyden's Painters, a Fanatic and a Hero .... 107 

CHAPTER IX 
Haarlem 128 



vi CONTENTS 

CHAPTER X 

PAGE 

Amsterdam 153 



CHAPTER XI 
Amsterdam's Pictures 173 

CHAPTER Xn 
Around Amsterdam: South and South-East .... 184 

CHAPTER Xni 
Around Amsterdam : North 195 

CHAPTER XIV 
Alkmaar and Hoorn, The Helder and Enkhuisen . . . 206 

CHAPTER XV 
Friesland : Stavoren to Leeuwarden 226 

CHAPTER XVI 

Friesland (continued) : Leeuwarden and Neighbourhood . 235 

CHAPTER XVII 
Groningen to Zutphen 250 

CHAPTER XVIII 
Arnheim to Bergen-op-Zoom 261 

CHAPTER XIX 
Middelburg 285 

CHAPTER XX 
Flushing 294 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

IN COLOUR 

Sunrise on the Maas . . . . . . Frontispiece 

Rotterdam To face page 6 

GOUDA „ i8 

The Great Church, Dort „ 36 

Utrecht „ 44 

On the Beach, Scheveningen „ 92 

Leyden ,, 98 

The Turf Market, Haarlem „ 128 

St. Nicolas Church, Amsterdam .... „ 154 

Canal in the Jews' Quarter, Amsterdam . . „ 162 

Volendam „ 202 

Cheese Market, Alkmaar „ 206 

The Harbour Tower, Hoorn ,, 214 

Market Place, Weigh-House, Hoorn ... „ 220 

The Dromedaris Tower, Enkhuisen ... „ 226 

Harlingen „ 242 

Kampen „ 256 

Arnheim „ 264 

The Market Place, Nymwegen .... „ 276 

Middelburg „ 286 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

IN MONOTONE 



Girl's Head. Jan Vermeer of Delft (Mauritshuis) 

The Store Cupboard. Peter de Hooch (Ryks) . 

From a Photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl 

Portrait of a Youth. Jan van Scorel (Boymans 
Museum, Rotterdam) 

The Sick Woman. Jan Steen (Ryks) 

From a Photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl 

The Anxious Family. Josef Israels . 

View of Dort. Albert Cuyp (Ryks) . 

From a Photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl 

The Never-Ending Prayer. Nicholas Maes (Ryks) 
From a Photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl 

A Lady. Paulus Moreelse (Ryks) .... 

Pilgrims to Jerusalem. Jan van Scorel (Kunstliefde 
Museum, Utrecht) 

View of Delft. Jan Vermeer (Mauritshuis) . 
From a Photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl 

The School of Anatomy. Rembrandt (Mauritshuis) 
From a Photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl 

A Young Woman. Rembrandt (Mauritshuis) 

The Steen Family. Jan Steen (Mauritshuis) . 
From a Photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl 

The Menagerie. Jan Steen (Mauritshuis) 
From a Photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl 

Portrait of G. Bicker, Landrichter of Muiden. Van 

der Heist (Ryks) 

From a Photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl 



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12 


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14 


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22 


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26 


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30 



34 
40 

46 
58 

66 

68 
74 

80 



86 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



IX 



The Syndics. Rembrandt (Ryks) .... 
From a Photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl 

The Oyster Feast. Jan Steen (Mauritshuis) . 
From a Photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl 

The Young Housekeeper. Gerard Dou (Mauritshuis) 
From a Photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl 

Breakfast. Gabriel Metsu (Ryks) .... 
From a Photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl 

The Groote Kerk. Johannes Bosboom (Boymans 
Museum, Rotterdam) 

The Painter and his Wife (?). Frans Hals (Ryks) 
From a Photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl 

■Group of Arquebusiers. Frans Hals (Haarlem) 
From a Photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl 

The Cat's Dancing Lesson. Jan Steen (Ryks^ 
From a Photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl 



To face page 104 



The 



Night Watch". Rembrandt (Ryks) 
From a Photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl 



The Reader. Jan Vermeer (Ryks) 

From a Photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl 

Milking Time. Anton Mauve . 

Paternal Advice. Gerard Terburg (Ryks) 
From a Photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl 

The Spinner. Nicholas Maes (Ryks) . 

From a Photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl 

Clara Alewijn. Dirck Santvoort (Ryks) . 

Family Scene. Jan Steen (Ryks) 

From a Photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl 

The Little Princess. Paulus Moreelse (Ryks] 
From a Photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl 

The Shepherd and his Flock. Anton Mauve 

Helene van der Schalke. Gerard Terburg (Ryks) , 
From a Photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl 

Elizabeth Bas. Rembrandt (Ryks) . . . , 
From a Photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl 



PREFACE 

T T would be useless to pretend that this book 
is authoritatively informing. It is a series 
of personal impressions of the Dutch country and 
the Dutch people, gathered during three visits, 
together with an accretion of matter, more or 
less pertinent, drawn from many sources, old and 
new, to which I hope I have given unity. For 
trustworthy information upon the more serious 
side of Dutch Ufe and character I would 
recommend Mr, Meldrum's Holland and the 
Hollanders, My thanks are due to my friends,, 
Mr. and Mrs. Emil Liiden, for saving me from 
many errors by reading this work in MS. 

E. V. L. 



^ Map to illuftrate -"*^ 
I Wanderer ^TiHOLrAND' 



Reference to the Provinces . 
-A. K. Jfollaiu)^ 

C. Zj^elav^^ 

D. Vtre6ht^ 

E . (^elderlar^-^ ^ 

F . JC'^raJbayxt^ K. <X>rentM^ 

H . OvervjfteL - M. frl£fUaW ^ 





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A WANDERER IN HOLLAND 
CHAPTER I 

ROTTERDAM 

To Rotterdam by water — To Rotterdam by rail — Holland's monotony of 
scenery — Holland in England — Rotterdam's few merits — The life of 
the river — The Rhine — Walt Whitman — Crowded canals — 'Barge 
life — The Dutch high-ways — -A perfect holiday — The canal's in- 
fluence on the national character — The florin and the franc — Lady 
Mary Wortley Montagu — The old and the poor — Holland's health — 
Funeral customs — The chemists' shops — Erasmus of Rotterdam — 
Latinised names — Peter de Hooch — True aristocracy — The Boy- 
mans treasures — 'Modern Dutch art — Matthew Maris — The Rotter- 
dam Zoo— The herons — The stork's mission — The ourang-outang — 
An eighteenth-century miser — A successful merchant — The Queen- 
Mother — Tom Hood in Rotterdam — Gouda. 

IT was possible until the autumn of 1904 to sail all the 
way to Rotterdam ; but passengers by the Harwich 
route are now landed at the Hook, which is just a wharf 
and a railway station. I am sorry for this, because after 
a rough passage it was very pleasant to glide in the early 
morning steadily up the Maas and gradually acquire a 
sense of Dutch quietude and greyness. But to disembark 
at the Hook at five a.m. and proceed by train has now 
become a necessity ; and one therefore misses the river, 
with the little villages on its banks, each with a tiny canal - 
harbour of its Qwn ; the groups of trees in the early mist \ 



2 THE CHARM OF MONOTONY 

the gulls and herons; and the increasing traffic as one 
drew nearer Schiedam and at last reached that forest of 
masts which is known as Rotterdam. 

But now that the only road to Rotterdam is the road of 
iron all that is past, and yet there is some compensation, 
for short as the journey is one may ground oneself very 
thoroughly in the characteristic scenery of Holland before 
it is finished. No one who looks steadily out of the 
windows between the Hook and Rotterdam has much to 
learn thereafter. Only changing skies and atmospheric 
effects can provide him with novelty, for most of Holland 
is like that. He has the formula. Nor is it necessarily 
new to him if he knows England well, North Holland 
being merely the Norfolk Broads, the Essex marshlands 
about Burnham-on-Crouch, extended. Only in its pecu- 
liarity of light and in its towns has Holland anything that 
we have not at home. 

England has even its canal life too, if one cared to in- 
vestigate it; the Broads are populous with wherries and 
barges ; cheese is manufactured in England in a score of 
districts ; cows range our meadows as they range the 
meadows of the Dutch. We go to Holland to see the 
towns, the pictures and the people. We go also because 
so many of us are so constituted that we never use our 
eyes until we are on foreign soil. It is as though a Cook's 
ticket performed an operation for cataract. 

But because one can learn the character of Dutch 
scenery so quickly — on a single railway journey — I do not 
wish to suffsest that henceforward it becomes monotonous 
and trite. One may learn the character of a friend very 
quickly, and yet wish to be in his company continually. 
Holland is one of the most delightful countries to move 
about in : everything that happens in it is of interest, I 




Frc 



girl's head 

JAX VERMEER OF DELFT 
VI the ficlure in tJic Mmcritshi 



THE RHINE AND THE THAMES 3 

have never quite lost the sense of excitement in crossing a 
canal in the train and getting a momentary glimpse of its 
receding straightness, perhaps broken by a brown sail. In 
a country where, between the towns, so little happens, even 
the slightest things make a heightened appeal to the ob- 
server; while one's eyes are continually kept bright and 
one's mind stimulated by the ever-present freshness and 
clearness of the land and its air. 

Rotterdam, it should be said at once, is not a pleasant 
city. It must be approached as a centre of commerce and 
maritime industry, or not at all ; if you do not like sailor 
men and sailor ways, noisy streets and hurrying people, 
leave Rotterdam behind, and let the train carry you to The 
Hague. It is not even particularly Dutch : it is cosmo- 
politan. The Dutch are quieter than this, and cleaner. 
And yet Rotterdam is unique — its church of St. Lawrence 
has a grey and sombre tower which has no equal in the 
country ; there is a windmill on the Cool Singel which is 
essentially Holland; the Boy mans Museum has a few admir- 
able pictures ; there is a curiously fascinating stork in the 
Zoological Gardens ; and the river is a scene of romantic 
energy by day and night. I think you must go to Rotter- 
dam, though it be only for a few hours. 

At Rotterdam we see what the Londoner misses by 
having a river that is navigable in the larger sense only 
below his city. To see shipping at home we must make 
our tortuous way to the Pool ; Rotterdam has the Pool 
in her midst. Great ships pass up and down all day. 
The Thames, once its bustling mercantile life is cut short 
by London Bridge, dwindles to a stream of pleasure ; the 
Maas becomes the Rhine, 

Walt Whitman is the only writer who has done justice 
to a great harbour, and he only by that sheer force of 



4 WALT ON THE HARBOUR 

enumeration which in this connection rather stands for than 
is poetiy. As a matter of fact it is the reader of such an 
inventory as we find in " Crossing Brooklyn Feny " that is 
the poet : Whitman is only the machinery. Whitman 
gives the suggestion and the reader's own memory or 
imagination does the rest. Many of the lines might as 
easily have been wiitten of Rotterdam as of Brooklvn : — 

The sailors at work in the rigging or out astride the spars, 

The round masts, the swinging motion of the hulls, the slender serpentine 

pennants, 
The large and small steamers in motion, the pilots in their pilot-houses, 
The white wake left by the passage, the quick tremulous whirl of the 

wheels, 
The flags of all nations, the falling of them at sunset. 
The scallop-edged waves in the twilight, the ladled cups, the frolicsome 

crests and glistening, 
The stretch afar growing dimmer and dimmer, the grey walls of the 

granite storehouses by the docks, 
On the river the shado\\y group, the bis steam-tug closely flank'd on each 

side by the barges, the hay-boat, the belated lighter. 
On the neighbouring shore the fires from the foundry chimneys burning 

high and glaringly into the night. 
Casting their flicker of black contrasted with wild red and yellow light 

over the tops of the houses, and down into the clefts of streets. 

There is of course nothing odd in the description of one 

harbour fitting another, for harbours have no one nation- 

ahty but all. Whitman was not otherwise very strong 

upon Holland. He wiites in " Salut au Monde " of " the 

sail and steamships of the world " which in his mind's eye 

he beholds as they 

Wait steam'd up ready to start in the ports of Australia, 
Wait at Liverpool, Glasgow, Dublin, Marseilles, Lisbon, Naples 
Hamburg, Bremen, Bordeaux, The Hague, Copenhagen. 

It is not easy for one of the " sail or steamships of the 
world " to wait steamed up at The Hague ; because The 
Hague has no harbour except for small craft and barges. 



SPRING CLEANING PASSIM 5 

Shall we assume, with great charity, that Walt feared that 
the word Rotterdam might impair his rhythm ? 

Not only big shipping : I think one may see barges and 
canal boats in greater variety at Rotterdam than anywhere 
else. One curious thing to be noticed as they lie at rest 
in the canals is the absence of men. A woman is always 
there ; her husband only rarely. The only visible captain 
is the fussy, shrewish little dog which, suspicious of the 
whole world, patrols the boat from stem to stern, and warns 
you that it is against the law even to look at his property. 
I hope his bite is not equal to his bark. 

Every barge has its name. What the popular style was 
seven years ago, when I was here last, I cannot remember ; 
but to-day it is " Wilhelmina ". English suburban villas 
have not a greater variety of fantastic names than the canal 
craft of Holland ; nor, with all our monopoly of the word 
" home," does the Enghsh suburban villa suggest more com- 
pact cosiness than one catches gleams of through their cabin 
windows or down their companions. 

Spring cleaning goes on here, as in the Dutch houses, all 
the year round, and the domiciliary part of the vessels is 
spotless. Every bulwark has a washing tray that can be 
fixed or detached in a moment. " It's a fine day, let us 
kill something," says the Englishman ; " Here's an odd 
moment, let us wash something," says the Dutch vrouw. 

In some of the Rotterdam canals the barges are so 
packed that they lie touching each other, with their 
burgees flying all in the same direction, as the vanes of 
St. Sepulchre's in Holborn cannot do. How they ever get 
disentangled again and proceed on their free way to their 
distant homes is a mystery. But in the shipping world 
incredible things can happen at night. 

One does not, perhaps, in Rotterdam realise all at once 



6 A LOTOS-EATER 

that every drop of water in these city-bound canals is 
related to every other drop of water in the other canals of 
Holland, however distant. From any one canal you can reach 
in time every other. The canal is really much more the 
high road of the country than the road itself. The barge 
is the Pickford van of Holland. Here we see some of the 
secret of the Dutch deliberateness. A country which must 
wait for its goods until a barge brings them has every 
opportunity of acquiring philosophic phlegm. 

After a while one gets accustomed to the ever-present 
canal and the odd spectacle (to us) of masts in the streets 
and sails in the fields. All the Dutch towns are amphibious, 
but some are more watery than others. 

The Dutch do not use their wealth of water as we should. 
They do not swim in it, they do not race on it, they do not 
row for pleasure at all. Water is their servant, never a 
light-hearted companion. 

I can think of no more reposeful holiday than to step on 
board one of these barges wedged together in a Rotter- 
dam canal, and never lifting a finger to alter the natural 
course of events — to accelerate or divert — be carried by it 
to, say, Harlingen, in Friesland : between the meadows ; 
under the noses of the great black and white cows ; past 
herons fishing in the rushes ; through little villages with 
da,zzling milk-cans being scoured on the banks, and the 
good-wives washing, and saturnine smokers in black velvet 
flippers passing the time of day ; through big towns, by rows 
of sombre houses seen through a delicate screen of leaves ; 
under low bridges crowded with children ; through naiTOw 
locks ; ever moving, moving, slowly and surely, sometimes 
sailing, sometimes quanting, sometimes being towed, with 
the wide Dutch sky overhead, and the plovers crying in it, 
and the clean west wind driving the windmills, and every- 



THE FLORIN AND THE FRANC 7 

thing j ust as it was in Rembrandt's day and j ust as it will 
be five hundred years hence. 

Holland when all is said is a country of canals. It may 
have cities and pictures, windmills and cows, quaint build- 
ings, and quainter costumes, but it is a country of canals 
before all. The canals set the tune. The canals keep it 

deliberate and wise. 

I' 

One can be in Rotterdam, or in whatever town one's 
travels really begin, but a very short time without dis- 
covering, that the Dutch unit — the florin — is a very 
unsatisfactory servant. The dearness of Holland strikes 
one continually, but it does so with peculiar force if one 
has crossed the frontier from Belgium, where the unit is 
a franc. It is too much to say that a sovereign in Holland 
is worth only twelve shillings : the case is not quite so 
extreme as that ; but a sovereign in Belgium is, for all 
practical purposes, worth twenty-five shillings, and the 
contrast after reaching Dutch soil is very striking. One 
has to recollect that the spidery letter " f," which in those 
friendly little restaurants in the Rue Hareng at Brussels 
had stood for a franc, now symbolises that far more serious 
item the florin; and f. 1.50, which used to be a trifle of 
one and threepence, is now half a crown. 

Even in our own country, where we know something 
about the cost of things, we are continually conscious of 
the fallacy embodied in the statement that a sovereign is 
equal to twenty shillings. We know that in theory that 
is so ; but we know also that it is so only as long as the 
sovereign remains unchanged. Change it and it is worth 
next to nothing — half a sovereign and a little loose silver. 
But in Holland the disparity is even more pathetic. To 
change a sovereign there strikes one as the most ridiculous 
business transaction of one's life. 



8 TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO 

Certain things in Holland are dear beyond all under- 
standing. At The Hague, for example, we drank Eau 
d'Evian, a very popular bottled water for which in any 
French restaurant one expects to pay a few pence ; and 
when the bill arrived this simple fluid cut such a dashing 
figure in it that at first I could not recognise it at all. 
When I put the matter to the landlord, he explained that 
the duty made it impossible for him to charge less than 
f. 1.50 (or half a crown) a bottle; but I am told that his 
excuse was too fanciful. None the less, half a crown was 
the charge, and apparently no one objects to pay it. The 
Dutch, on pleasure or eating bent, are prepared to pay 
anything. One would expect to get a reasonable claret 
for such a figure ; but not in Holland. Wine is good there, 
but it is not cheap. Only in one hotel — and that in the 
unspoiled north, at Groningen — did I see wine placed auto- 
matically upon the table, as in France. 

Rotterdam must have changed for the worse under 
modern conditions ; for it is no longer as it was in Lady 
Mary Wortley Montagu's day. From Rotterdam in 1716 
she sent the Countess of Mar a pretty account of the city : 
" All the streets are paved with broad stones, and before 
the meanest artificers' doors seats of various coloured 
marbles, and so neatly kept that, I will assure you, I 
walked all over the town yesterday, incognita, in my 
slippers, without receiving one spot of dirt ; and you may 
see the Dutch maids washing the pavement of the street 
with more application than ours do our bed-chambers. The 
town seems so full of people, with such busy faces, all in 
motion, that I can hardly fancy that it is not some cele- 
brated fair ; but I see it is every day the same. 

" The shops and warehouses are of a surprising neatness 
and magnificence, filled with an incredible quantity of fine 



A COMPETENCY EVERYWHERE 9 

merchandise, and so much cheaper than what we see in 
England, I have much ado to persuade myself I am still 
so near it. Here is neither dirt nor beggary to be seen. 
One is not shocked with those loathsome cripples, so common 
in London, nor teased with the importunities of idle fellows 
and wenches, that choose to be nasty and lazy. The 
common servants and the little shopwomen here are more 
nicely clean than most of our ladies ; and the great variety 
of neat dresses (every woman dressing her head after her 
own fashion) is an additional pleasure in seeing the town." 

The claims of business have now thrust aside many of 
the little refinements described by Lady Mary, her descrip- 
tion of which has but to be transferred to some of the 
smaller Dutch towns to be however in the main still ac- 
curate. But what she says of the Dutch servants is true 
everywhere to this minute. There are none more fi'esh and 
capable ; none who carry their lot with more quiet dignity. 
Not the least part of the very warm hospitality which is 
offered in Dutch houses is played by the friendhness of the 
servants. 

Every one in Holland seems to have enough ; no one too 
much. Great wealth there may be among the merchants, 
but it is not ostentatious. Holland still seems to have no 
poor in the extreme sense of the word, no rags. Doubtless 
the labourers that one sees are working at a low rate, but 
they are probably living comfortably at a lower, and are not 
to be pitied except by those who still cherish the illusion 
that riches mean happiness. The dirt and poverty that 
exist in every English town and village are very uncommon. 
Nor does one see maimed, infirm or very old people, except 
now and then — so rarely as at once to be reminded of their 
rarity. 

One is struck, even in Rotterdam, which is a peculiarly 



10 THE RITUAL OF DISSOLUTION 

strenuous town, by the ruddy health of the people in the 
streets. In England, as one walks about, one sees too often 
the shadow of Death on this face and that ; but in Holland 
it is difficult to believe in his power, the people have so 
prosperous, so permanent, an air. 

That the Dutch die there is no doubt, for a funeral is 
an almost daily object, and the aanspreker is continually 
hurrying by; but where are the dead? The cemeteries 
are minute, and the churches have no churchyards. Of 
Death, however, when he comes the nation is very proud. 
The mourning customs are severe and enduring. No ex- 
pense is spared in spreading the interesting tidings. It is 
for this purpose that the aanspreker flourishes in his impor- 
tance and pomp. Draped heavily in black, from house to 
house he moves, wherever the slightest ties of personal or 
business acquaintanceship exist, and announces his news. 
A lady of Hilversum tells me that she was once formally 
the recipient of the message, "Please, ma'am, the baker's 
compliments, and he's dead," the time and place of the 
interment following. I said draped in black, but the 
aanspreker is not so monotonous an official as that. He 
has his subtleties, his nuances. If the deceased is a child, 
he adds a white rosette ; if a bachelor or a maid, he in- 
timates the fact by degrees of trimming. 

The aanspreker was once occasionally assisted by the 
huilebalk, but I am afraid his day is over. The huilebalk 
accompanied the aansprekers from house to house and wept 
on the completion of their sad message. He wore a wide- 
awake hat with a very large brim and a long- tailed coat. 
If properly paid, says my informant, real tears coursed 
down his cheeks ; in any case his presence was a luxury 
possible only to the rich. 

The aanspreker is called in also at the other end of 



DRUGS AND NONCHALANCE 11 

life. Assuming a more jocund air, he trips from house to 
house announcing little strangers. 

That the Dutch are a healthy people one might gather 
also from the character of their druggists. In this country, 
even in very remote towns, one may reveal one's symptoms 
to a chemist or his assistant feeling certain that he will 
know more or less what to prescribe. But in Holland the 
chemists are often young women, who preside over shops 
in which one cannot repose any confidence. One likes a 
chemist's shop at least to look as if it contained reasonable 
remedies. These do not. Either our shops contain too 
many drugs or these too few. The chemist's sign, a large 
comic head with its mouth wide open (known as the 
gaper), is also subversive of confidence. A chemist's shop 
is no place for jokes. In Holland one must in short do 
as the Dutch do, and remain well. 

Rotterdam's first claim to consideration, apart from its 
commercial importance, is that it gave bii-th to Erasmus, 
a bronze statue of whom stands in the Groote Market, 
looking down on the stalls of fruit. Erasmus of Rotter- 
dam — it sounds like a contradiction in terms. Gherardt 
Gherardts of Rotterdam is a not dishonourable cacophany 
— and that was the reformer's true name ; but the fashion 
of the time led scholars to adopt a Hellenised, or Latinised, 
style. Erasmus Desiderius, his new name, means Beloved 
and long desired. Grotius, Barlaeus, Vossius, Arminius, all 
sacrificed local colour to smooth syllables. We should be 
very grateful that the fashion did not spread also to the 
painters. What a loss it would be had the magnificent 
rugged name of Rembrandt van Rhyn been exchanged for 
a smooth emasculated Latinism. 

Rotterdam had another illustrious son whose work as 
little suggests his birthplace — the exquisite painter Peter 



12 TRUE ARISTOCRACY 

de Hooch. According to the authorities he modelled his 
style upon Rembrandt and Fabritius, but the influence of 
Rembrandt is concealed from the superficial observer. De 
Hooch, whose pictures are very scarce, worked chiefly at 
Delft and Haarlem, and it was at Haarlem that he died 
in 1681. If one were put to it to find a new standard of 
aristocracy superior to accidents of blood or rank one 
might do worse than demand as the ultimate test the pos- 
session of either a Vermeer of Delft or a Peter de Hooch. 

One only of Peter de Hooch's pictures is reproduced in 
this book — " The Store Cupboard ". This is partly because 
there are, I think, better paintings of his in London than 
at Amsterdam. At least it seems to me that his picture 
in our National Gallery of the waiting maid is finer than 
anything by De Hooch in Holland. But in no other work 
of his that I know is his simple charm so apparent as in 
"The Store Cupboard". This is surely the Christmas 
supplement earned out to its highest power — and by its 
inventor. The thousands of domestic scenes which have 
proceeded from this one canvas make the memory reel ; and 
yet nothing has staled the prototype. It remains a sweet 
and genuine and radiant thing. De Hooch had two 
fetishes — a rich crimson dress or jacket and an open door. 
His compatriot Vermeer, whom he sometimes resembles, 
was similarly addicted to a note of blue. 

No one has managed direct sunlight so well as De 
Hooch. The light in his rooms is the light of day. One 
can almost understand how Rembrandt and Gerard Dou 
got their concentrated effects of illumination; but how 
this omnipresent radiance streamed from De Hooch's 
palette is one of the mysteries. It is as though he did not 
paint light but foand light on his canvas and painted 
everything else in its midst. 




THE STORE CUPBOARD 

PETER DE HOOCH 

From the picture in the Ryks Museum 



SOME ROTTERDAM PICTURES 13 

Rotterdam has some excellent pictures in its Boymans 
Museum ; but they are, I fancy, overlooked by many 
visitors. It seems no city in which to see pictures. It is 
a city for anything rather than art — a mercantile centre, 
a hive of bees, a shipping port of intense activity. And 
yet perhaps the quietest little Albert Cuyp in Holland is 
here, '' De Oude Oostpoort te Rotterdam," a small evening 
scene, without cattle, suffused in a golden glow. But all 
the Cuyps, and there are six, are good — all inhabited by 
their own light. 

Among the other Boymans treasures which I find I 
have marked (not necessarily because they are good — for 
I am no judge — but because I liked them) are Ferdinand 
Bol's fine fi-ee portrait of Dirck van der Waeijen, a boy 
in a yellow coat ; Erckhart's " Boaz and Ruth," a small 
sombre canvas with a suggestion of Velasquez in it ; 
Hobbema's ''Boomrijk Landschap," one of the few paint- 
ings of this artist that Holland possesses. The English, 
I might remark, always appreciative judges of Dutch art, 
have been particularly assiduous in the pursuit of Hob- 
bema, with the result that his best work is in our country. 
Holland has nothing of his to compare with the " Avenue 
at Middelharnis," one of the gems of our National Gallery. 
And his feathery trees may be studied at the Wallace 
Collection in' great comfort. 

Other fine landscapes in the Boymans Museum are three 
by Johan van Kessel, who was a pupil of Hobbema, one 
by Jan van der Meer, one by Koninck, and, by Jacob van 
Ruisdael, a cornfield in the sun and an Amsterdam canal 
with white sails upon it. The most notable head is that 
by Karel Fabritius ; Hendrick Pot's "Het Lokstertje '' 
is interesting for its large free manner and signs of the 
influence of Hals : and Emmanuel de Witte's Amsterdam 



14 MODERN DUTCH PAINTERS 

fishmarket is curiously modern. But the figure picture 
which most attracted me was "Portret van een jongeling," 
by Jan van Scorel, of whom we shall learn more at Utrecht. 
This little portrait, which I reproduce on the opposite 
page, is wholly charming and vivid. 

The Boymans Museum contains also modern Dutch 
paintings. Wherever modern Dutch paintings are to 
be seen, I look first for the delicate art of Matthew Maris, 
■and next for Anton Mauve. Here there is no Matthew 
Maris, and but one James Maris. There is one Mauve. 
The modern Dutch painter for the most part paints the 
same picture so often. But Matthew Maris is full of sur- 
prises. If a new picture by any of his contemporaries 
stood with its face to the wall one would know what to 
expect. From Israels, a fisherman's wife ; from Mesdag, 
a gi'ey stretch of sea ; fi'om Bosboom, a superb church 
interior ; from Mauve, a peasant with sheep or a peasant 
with a cow ; from Weissenbruch, a stream and a willow ; 
from Breitner, an Amsterdam street; from James Maris 
a masterly scene of boats and wet sky. Usually one would 
have guessed aright. But with Matthew Maris is no 
certainty. It may be a little dainty girl lying on her side 
and watching butterflies ; it may be a sombre hillside at 
Montmartre ; it may be a girl cooking ; it may be scaf- 
folding in Amsterdam, or a mere at evening, or a baby's 
head, or a village street. He has many moods, and he is 
always distinguished and subtle. 

Rotterdam has a zoological garden which, although 
inferior to ours, is far better than that at Amsterdam, 
while it converts The Hague's Zoo into a travesty. Last 
spring the lions were in splendid condition. They are well 
housed, but fewer distractions are provided for them than 
in Regent's Park. I found myself fascinated by the herons. 




PORTRAIT OF A YOUTH 

JAN VAN SCOREL 

From the picture in the BoyrJians Museum, Rotterdam, 



THE STORK 15 

who were continually soaring out over the neighbouring 
houses and returning hke darkening clouds. In England, 
although the heron is a native, we rarely seem to see him ; 
while to study him is extremely difficult. In Holland he 
is ubiquitous : both wild and tame. 

More interesting still was the stork, whose nest is set 
high on a pinnacle of the buffalo house. He was building 
in the leisurely style of the British working man. He 
would nep-ligently descend from the heavens with a stick. 
This he would lay on the fabric and then carefully perform 
his toilet, looking round and down all the time to see that 
every one else was busy. Whenever his eye lighted upon 
a toddhng child or a perambulator it visibly brightened. 
" My true work ! " he seemed to say ; " this nest building 
is a mere by-path of industry." After prinking and over- 
looking, and congratulating himself thus, for a few minutes, 
he would stroll off, over the housetops, for another stick. 
He was the unquestionable King of the Garden. 

Why are there no heronries in the English public parks ? 
And why is there no stork ? The Dutch have a proverb, 
" Where the stork abides no mother dies in childbed ". 
Still more, why are there no storks in France? The 
author of Fecondite should have imported them. 

No Zoo, however well managed, can keep an ourang- 
outang long, and therefore one should always study that 
uncomfortably human creature whenever the opportunity 
occurs. I had great fortune at Rotterdam, for I chanced 
to be in the ourang-outang's house when his keeper 
came in. Entering the enclosure, he romped with him 
in a score of diverting ways. They embraced each other, 
fed each other, teased each other. The humanness of 
the creature was frightful. Perhaps our likeness to 
ourang-outangs (except for our ridiculously short arms. 



16 A MERCHANT PRINCE 

inadequate lower jaws and lack of hair) made him similarly 
uneasy. 

Rotterdam, I have read somewhere, was famous at the 
end of the eighteenth century for a miser, the richest man 
in the city. He always did his own marketing, and once 
changed his butcher because he weighed the paper with 
the meat. He bought his milk in farthings worths, half of 
which had to be dehvered at his front door and half at the 
back, "to gain the little advantage of extra measure". 
Different travellers note different things, and William 
Chambers, the publisher, in his Tour in Holland in 1839, 
selected for special notice another type of Rotterdam 
resident: "One of the most remarkable men of this [the 
merchant] class is Mr. Van Hoboken of Rhoon and Pend- 
recht, who lives on one of the havens. This individual 
began hfe as a merchant's porter, and has in process of 
time attained the highest rank among the Dutch mercan- 
tile aristocracy. He is at present the principal owner of 
twenty large ships in the East India trade, each, I was 
informed, worth about fourteen thousand pounds, besides 
a large landed estate, and much floating wealth of differ- 
ent descriptions. His establishment is of vast extent, and 
contains departments for the building of ships and manu- 
facture of all their necessary equipments. This gentleman, 
until lately, was in the habit of giving a splendid fete once 
a year to his family and friends, at which was exhibited 
with modest pride the porter's truck which he drew at the 
outset of his career. One seldom hears of British merchants 
thus keeping alive the remembrance of early meanness of 
circumstances." 

At one of Rotterdam's stations I saw the Queen-Mother, 
a smiling, maternal lady in a lavender silk di-ess, caiTying a 
large bouquet, and saying pretty things to a deputation 



HOOD'S ROTTERDAM POEM 17 

drawn up on the platform. Rotterdam had put out its 
best bunting, and laid six inches of sand on its roads, to do 
honour to this kindly royalty. The band played the tender 
national anthem, which is always so unlike what one ex- 
pects it to be, as her train steamed away, and then all the 
grave bearded gentlemen in uniforms and frock coats who 
had attended her drove in their open carriages back to the 
town. Not even the presence of the mounted guard made 
it more formal than a family party. Everybody seemed on 
the best of friendly terms of equality with everybody else. 
Tom Hood, who had it in him to be so good a poet, but 
living in a country where art and literature do not count, 
was permitted to coarsen his delicate genius in the hunt 
for bread, wrote one of his comic poems on Rotterdam. 
In it are many happy touches of description : — 

Before me lie dark waters 
In broad canals and deep, 
Whereon the silver moonbeams 
Sleep, restless in their sleep ; 
A sort of vulgar Venice 
Reminds me where I am ; 
Yes, yes, you are in England, 
And I'm at Rotterdam. 

Tall houses with quaint gables, 
Where frequent windows shine, 
And quays that lead to bridges 
And trees in formal line, 
And masts of spicy vessels 
From western Surinam, 
All tell me you're in England, 
But I'm in Rotterdam. 

With headquarters at Rotterdam one may make certain 
small journeys into the neighbourhood— to Dordrecht by 
river, to Delft by canal, to Gouda by canal ; or one may 
take longer voyages, even to Cologne if one wishes. But I 

2, 



18 GOUDA 

do not recommend it as a city to linger in. Better than 
Rotterdam's large hotels are, I think, the smaller, humbler 
and more Dutch inns of the less commercial towns. This 
indeed is the case all over Holland : the plain Dutch inn 
of the neighbouring small town is pleasanter than the large 
hotels of the city ; and, as I have remarked in the chapter 
on Amsterdam, the distances are so short, and the trains 
so numerous, that one suffers no inconvenience from staying 
in the smaller places. 

Gouda (pronounced Howda) it is well to visit from Rotter- 
dam, for it has not enough to repay a sojourn in its midst. 
It has a Groote Kerk and a pretty isolated white stadhuis. 
But Gouda's fame rests on its stained glass — gigantic re- 
presentations of myth, history and scripture, chiefly by 
the brothers Crabeth. The windows are interesting rather 
than beautiful. They lack the richness and mystery which 
one likes to find in old stained glass, and the church itself 
is bare and cold and unfi'iendly. Hemmed in by all this 
coloured glass, so able and so direct, one sighs for a 
momentary glimpse of the rose window at Chartres, or even 
of the too heavily kaleidoscopic patterns of Brussels Cathe- 
dral. No matter, the Gouda windows in their way are 
very fine, and in the sixth, depicting the story of Judith 
and Holofernes, there is a very fascinating little DiJreresque 
tower on a rock under sieo^e. 

If one is taking Gouda on the way from Rotterdam 
to Amsterdam, the surrounding country should not be 
neglected from the carriage window^s. Holland is rarely 
so luxuriant as here, and so peacefully beautiful. 






%*'^ 



CHAPTER II 

THE DUTCH IN ENGLISH LITERATURE 

Hard things against the Dutch — Andrew Marvell's satire — The iniquity 
of living below sea-level — Historic sarcasms — " Invent a shovel and 
be a magistrate" — Heterogeneity — Foot warmers — A champion of 
the Hollow Land — The Dutch Drawn to the Life — Dutch suspicion 
— Sir William Temple's opinion — and Sir Thomas Overbury's — Dr. 
Johnson's project — Dutch courtesy — Dutch discourtesy — National 
manners — A few phrases — The origin of " Dutch News " — A vindica- 
tion of Dutch courage. 

TO say hard things of the Dutch was once a recognised 
literary pastime. At the time of our war with 
Holland no poet of any pretensions refrained from writing 
at least one anti-Batavian satire, the classical example of 
which is Andrew Marvell's " Character of Holland " (follow- 
ing Samuel Butler's), a pasquinade that contains enough 
wit and fancy and contempt to stock a score of the nation's 
ordinary assailants. It begins perfectly : — 

Holland, that scarce deserves the name of land, 
As but th' off-scouring of the British sand, 
And so much earth as was contributed 
By English pilots when they heav'd the lead. 
Or what by the ocean's slow alluvion fell 
Of shipwrackt cockle and the muscle-shell : 
This indigested vomit of the sea 
Fell to the Dutch by just propriety. 

Glad then, as miners who have found the ore 
They, with mad labour, fish'd the land to shoar 
And div'd as desperately for each piece 

(19) 



20 NAPOLEON AND ALVA 

Of earth, as if t had been of ambergreece ; 
Collecting anxiously small loads of clay, 
Less than what building swallows bear away ; 
Or than those pills which sordid beetles roul, 
Transfusing into them their dunghil soul. 

How did they rivet, with gigantick piles. 
Thorough the center their new-catched miles ; 
And to the stake a struggling country bound, 
Where barking waves still bait the forced ground ; 
Building their wat'ry Babel far more high 
To reach the sea, than those to scale the sky ! 

Yet still his claim the injur'd ocean laid. 
And oft at leap-frog ore their steeples plaid : 
As if on purpose it on land had come 
To show them what's their mare liherum. 
A daily deluge over them does boyl ; 
The earth and water play at level-coyl. 
The fish oft times the burger dispossest, 
And sat, not as a meat, but as a guest, 
And oft the Tritons and the sea-nymphs saw 
Whole sholes of Dutch serv'd up for Cabillau ; 
Or, as they over the new level rang'd 
For pickled herring, pickled heeven chang'd. 
Nature, it seem'd, asham'd of her mistake. 
Would throw their land away at duck and drake.- 

The poor Dutch were never forgiven for living below the 
sea-level and gaining their security by magnificent feats 
of engineering and persistence. Why the notion of a 
reclaimed land should have seemed so comic I cannot 
understand, but Marvell certainly justified the joke. 

Later, Napoleon, who liked to sum up a nation in a 
phrase, accused Holland of being nothing but a deposit of 
German mud, thrown there by the Rhine : while the Duke 
of Alva remarked genially that the Dutch were of all 
peoples those that lived nighest to hell ; but Marvell 's 
sarcasms are the best. Indeed I doubt if the literature 
of di'oll exaggeration has anything to compare with " The 
Character of Holland ". 



KING OF THE DUTCH 9.1 

The satiiist, now thoroughly warmed to his congenial 

task, continues : — 

Therefore Necessity, that first made kings, 
Something like government among them brings ; 
For, as with pygmees, who best kills the crane, 
Among the hungry, he that treasures grain, 
Among the blind, the one-ey'd blinkard reigns, 
So rules among the drowned he that draines : 
Not who first sees the rising sun, commands, 
But who could first discern the rising lands ; 
Who best could know to pump an earth so leak, 
Him they their Lord, and Country's Father, speak ; 
To make a bank, was a great plot of State, 
Invent a shov'l, and be a magistrate. 

So much for the conquest of Neptune, which in another 
nation were a laudable enough enterprise. Marvell then 
passes on to the national religion and the heterogeneity of 
Amsterdam : — 

'Tis probable Religion, after this. 
Came next in order, which they could not miss ; 
How could the Dutch but be converted, when 
Th' Apostles were so many fishermen ? 
Besides, the waters of themselves did rise. 
And, as their land, so them did re-baptize. 
Though Herring for their God few voices mist, 
And Poor-John to have been th' Evangelist, 
Faith, that could never twins conceive before, 
Never so fertile, spawn'd upon this shore 
More pregnant than their Marg'ret, that laid down 
For Hans-in-Kelder of a whole Hans-Town. 

Sure when Religion did itself imbark. 
And from the East would Westward steer its ark, 
It struck, and spHtting on this unknown ground, 
Each one thence pillag'd the first piece he found : 
Hence Amsterdam, Turk-Christian-Pagan-Jew, 
Staple of sects, and mint of schisme grew ; 
That bank of conscience, where not one so strange 
Opinion but finds credit, and exchange. 
In vain for Catholicks ourselves we bear ; 



22 RELIGION AND FOOTSTOOLS 

The universal Church is only there. 

Nor can civility there want for tillage, 

Where wisely for their Court, they chose a village : 

How fit a title clothes their governours. 

Themselves the hogs, as all their subject bores ! 

Let it suffice to give their country fame. 
That it had one Civilis call'd by name. 
Some fifteen hundred and more years ago, 
But surely never any that was so. 

There is something rather splendid in the attitude of a 
man who can take a whole nation as his butt and bend 
every circumstance to his purpose of ridicule and attack. 
Our satirists to-day are contented to pillory individuals or 
possibly a sect or clique. Marvell's enjoyment in his own 
exuberance and ingenuity is so apparent and infectious 
that it matters nothing to us whether he was fair or 
unfair. 

The end is inconclusive, being a happy recollection that 
he had omitted any reference to stoofjes, the footstools 
filled with burning peat which are used to keep the feet 
warm in church. Such a custom was of course not less 
reprehensible than the building of dykes to keep out the 
sea. Hence these eight lines, which, however, would have 
come better earlier in the poem : — 

See but their mermaids, with their tails of fish. 

Reeking at church over the chafing-dish ! 

A vestal turf, enshrin'd in earthen ware, 

Fumes through the loopholes of a wooden square ; 

Each to the temple with these altars tend, 

But still does place it at her western end ; 

While the fat steam of female sacrifice 

Fills the priest's nostrils, and puts out his eyes. 

Not all the poets, however, abused the Dutch. John 
Hagthorpe, in his England^ s Exchequer in 1625 (written 
before the war : hence, perhaps, his kindness) thus addressed 
the "hollow land":— 




THE SICK WOMAN 

JAN STEEN 
From the picttcre in the Ryks Micse:i7n 



" THE DUTCH DRAWN TO THE LIFE " 23 

Fair Holland, had'st thou England's chalky rocks, 
To gird thy watery waist ; her healthful mounts, 

With tender grass to feed thy nibbling flocks : 
Her pleasant groves, and crystalline clear founts, 

Most happy should' st thou be by just accounts, 
That in thine age so fresh a youth do'st feel 
Though flesh of oak, and ribs of brass and steel. 

But what hath prudent mother Nature held 

From thee — that she might equal shares impart 
Unto her other sons — that's not compeil'd 

To be the guerdons of thy wit and art ? 
And industry, that brings from every part 

Of every thing the fairest and the best. 

Like the Arabian bird to build thy nest ? 

Like the Arabian bird thy nest to build, 

With nimble wings thou flyest for Indian sweets, 

And incense which the Sabaan forests yield. 
And in thy nest the goods of each pole meets, — 

Which thy foes hope, shall serve thy funeral rites — 
But thou more wise, secur'd by thy deep skill, 
Dost build on waves, from fires more safe than hill. 

To return to the severer critics — in 1664 was published 
a little book called The Dutch Drawn to the Life, a hostile 
work not improbably written with the intention of exciting 
English animosity to the point of war. A great deal was 
made of the success of the Dutch fisheries and the mis- 
management of our own. The nation was criticised in all 
its aspects — " well nigh three millions of men, well-propor- 
tioned, great lovers of our English beer ". The following 
passage on the drinking capacity of the Dutch would have 
to be modified to-day : — v 

By their Excise, which riseth with their charge, the more money they 
pay, the more they receive again, in that insensible but profitable way : 
what is exhaled up in clouds, falls back again in showers : what the 
souldier receives in pay, he payes in Drink : their very enemies, though 
they hate the State, yet love their liquor, and pay excise : the most idle, 
slothful, and most improvident, that selleth his blood for drink, and his 
flesh for bread, serves at his own charge, for every pay day he payeth his 
sutler, and he the common purse. 



24 EVENING STARRE AND MORNING STARRE 

Here ai-e other strokes assisting to the proti'aiture " to 
the life " of this people : " Their habitations are kept 
handsomer than then* bodies, and their bodies than then* 
soules". — "The Dutch man's building is not large, but 
neat ; handsome on the outside, on the inside hung with 
pictui'es and tapestry. He that hath not bread to eat 
hath a picture." — "They are seldom deceived, for they 
will trust nobody. They may always deceive, for you must 
trust them, as for instance, if you ti'avel, to ask a bill of 
Particulars is to puiTe in a wasp's nest, you must pay what 
they ask as sure as if it were the assessment of a Subsidy." 

But the wittiest and shrewdest of the prose critics of 
Holland was Owen Feltham, from whom I quote later. 
His little book on the Low Countries is as packed with 
pointed phrase as a satire by Pope : the first half of it 
whimsically destructive, the second half eulogistic. It is 
he who charges the Dutch convi\aal spirits with drinking 
dowTi the Evening Starre and drinking up the Morning 
Starre. 

The old literature tells us also that the Dutch were 
not always clean. Indeed, their own painters prove this : 
Ostade pre-eminently. There are many allusions in Eliza- 
^.ethan and early Stuart literature to their dirt and rags, 
in Earle's Microcosmography, for example, a younger 
orother's last refuge is said to be the Low Countries, 
"where rasrs and linen are no scandal". But better 
testimony comes perhaps from The English Schole-Master, 
a seventeenth-century Dutch-English manual, from which 
I quote at some length later in this book. Here is a 
specimen scrap of dialogue : — 

S. May it please you to give me leave to go out ? 
M. Whither ? 
S. Home. 



TEMPLE AND OVERBURY 25 

M. How is it that you goe so often home ? 

S. My mother commanded that I and my brother should come to her 
this day. 

M. For what cause ? 

S. That our mayd may beat out our clothes. 
M. What is that to say ? Are you louzie ? 
S. Yea, very louzie. 

Sir William Temple, the patron of Swift, the husband 
of Dorothy Osborne, and our ambassador at The Hague 
— where he talked horticulture, cured his gout by the 
remedy known as Moxa, and collected materials for the 
leisurely essays and memoirs that were to be written at 
Moor Park — knew the Dutch well and wrote of them with 
much particularity. In his Observations itpon the Unitea 
Provinces he says this : " Holland is a country, where 
the earth is better than the air, and profit more in request 
than honour ; where there is more sense than wit ; more 
good nature than good humour, and more wealth than 
pleasure : where a man would chuse rather to travel than 
to live ; shall find more things to observe than desire ; 
and more persons to esteem than to love. But the same 
qualities and dispositions do not value a private man and 
a state, nor make a conversation agreeable, and a govern- 
ment great : nor is it unlikely, that some very great King 
might make but a very ordinary private gentleman, and 
some very extraordinary gentleman might be capable of 
making but a very mean Prince." 

Among other travellers who have summed up the Dutch 
in a few phrases is Su' Thomas Overbury, the author of 
some witty characters, including that very charming one 
of a Happy Milk Maid. In 1609 he thus generalised upon 
the Netherlanders : " Concerning the people : they are 
neither much devout, nor much wicked ; given all to drink, / 
and eminently to no other vice ; hard in bargaining, but 



26 OTHER WANDERERS IN HOLLAND 

just; surly and respectless, as in all democracies; thii'sty, 
industrious, and cleanly ; disheartened upon the least ill- 
success, and insolent upon good ; inventive in manufactures, 
and cunning in traffick : and generally, for matter of action, 
that natural slowness of theirs, suits better (by reason of 
the advisedness and perseverance it brings with it) than 
the rashness and changeableness of the French and Floren- 
tine wits; and the equality of spmts, which is among 
them and Switzers, renders them so fit for a democracy : 
which kind of government, nations of more stable wits, 
being once come to a consistent greatness, have seldom 
long endured." 

Many Englishmen have travelled in Holland and have 
set down the record of their experiences, from Thomas 
Coryate downwards. But the country has not been inspir- 
ing, and Dutch travels are poor reading. Had Dr. Johnson 
lived to accompany Bos well on a projected journey we 
should be the richer, but I doubt if any very interesting- 
narrative would have resulted. One of Johnson's con- 
temporaries, Samuel Ireland, the engi-aver, and the father 
of the fraudulent author of Vortigern^ wrote A Picturesque 
Tour through Holland, Brabant, and part of France, in 
1789, while a few years later one of Charles Lamb's early 
"drunken companions," Fell, wi-ote A Tour through the 
Batavian Republic, 1801 ; and both of these books yield a 
few experiences not without interest. Fell's is the duller. 
I quote from them now and again throughout this volume, 
but I might mention here a few of their more general 
observations. 

Fell, for example, was embarrassed by the very formal 
politeness of the nation. " The custom of bowing in 
Holland," he writes, " is extremely troublesome. It is not 
sufficient, as in England, that a person slightly moves his 



DUTCH MANNERS TO STRANGERS 27 

hat, but he must take it off his head, and continue un- 
covered till the man is past him to whom he pays the 
compliment. The ceremony of bowing is more strictly 
observed at Leyden and Haerlem, than at Rotterdam or 
The Hague. In either of the former cities, a stranger of 
decent appearance can scarcely walk in the streets without 
being obliged every minute to pull off his hat, to answer 
some civility of the same kind which he receives ; and these 
compliments are paid him not only by opulent people, but 
by mechanics and labourers, who bow with all the gi'avity 
and politeness of their superiors." 

Such civilities to strangers have become obsolete. So far 
from courtesy being the rule of the street, it is now, as I 
have hinted in the next chapter, impossible for an English- 
woman whose clothes chance to differ in any particular 
from those of the Dutch to escape embarrassing notice. 
Staring is earned to a point where it becomes almost a 
blow, and laughter and humorous sallies resound. I am 
told that the Boer war to a large extent broke down old 
habits of politeness to the English stranger. 

When one thinks of it, the Dutch habit of staring at 
the visitor until he almost wishes the sea would roll in and 
submerge him, argues a want of confidence in their country, 
tantamount to a confession of failure. Had they a little 
more trust in the attractive qualities of their land, a little 
more imagination to realise that in other eyes its flatness 
and quaintness might be even alluring, they would accept 
and acknowledge the compliment by doing as little as pos- 
sible to make their country's admirers uncomfortable. 

" Dutch courage," to which I refer below, is not our 
only use of Dutch as a contemptuous adjective. We say 
" Dutch Gold " for pinchbeck, " Dutch Myrtle " for a weed. 
" I shall talk to you like a Dutch uncle " is another saying, 



S8 " DUTCH NEWS " 

not in this case contemptuous but rather complimentary — 
signifying " I'll dress you down to some purpose ". One 
piece of slang we share with Holland : the reference to the 
pawnbroker as an uncle. In Holland the kindly friend 
at the three brass balls (which it may not be generally 
known are the ancient arms of Lombardy, the Lombards 
being the first money lenders,) is called Oom Jan or Uncle 
John. 

There is still another phrase, " Dutch news," which might 
be explained. The term is given by printers to very 
difficult copy — Dean Stanley's manuscript, for example, was 
probably known as Dutch news, so terrible was his hand, 
— and also to " pie ". The origin is to be found in the 
following paragraph from Notes and Queries. (The Sir 
Richard Phillips concerned was the vegetarian publisher so 
finely touched off by Borrow in Lavengro.) 

In his youth Sir Richard Phillips edited and published a paper at 
Leicester, called the Herald. One day an article appeared in it headed 
* Dutch Mail,' and added to it was an announcement that it had arrived 
too late for translation, and so had been cut up and printed in the original. 
This wondrous article drove half of England crazy, and for years the best 
Dutch scholars squabbled and pored over it without being able to arrive 
at any idea of what it meant. This famous ' Dutch Mail ' was, in reality, 
merely a column of pie. The story Sir Richard tells of this particular pie 
he had a whole hand in is this ; — 

" One evening, before one of our publications, my men and a boy 
overturned two or three columns of the paper in type. We had to get 
ready in some way for the coaches, which, at four o'clock in the morning, 
required four or five hundred papers. After every exertion we were short 
nearly a column ; but there stood on the galleys a tempting column of pie. 
It suddenly struck me that this might be thought Dutch. I made up the 
column, overcame the scruples of the foreman, and so away the country 
edition went with its philological puzzle, to worry the honest agricultural 
reader's head. There was plenty of time to set up a column of plain 
English for the local edition." Sir Richard tells of one man whom he 
met in Nottingham who for thirty-four years preserved a copy of the 
Leicester Herald, hoping that some day the matter would be explained, 



" DUTCH COURAGE " 29 

I doubt if any one nation is braver than any other ; and 
the fact that from Holland we get the contemptuous term 
"Dutch courage," meaning the courage which is dependent 
upon spirits (originally as supplied to malefactors about 
to mount the scaffold), is no indication that the Dutch 
lack bravery. To one who inquired as to the derivation 
of the phrase a poet unknown to me thus replied, some- 
when in the reign of William IV. The retort, I think, 
was sound : — 

Do you ask what is Dutch courage ? 

Ask the Thames, and ask the fleet, 
That, in London's fire and plague years. 

With De Ruyter yards could mete : 
Ask Prince Robert and d'Estrees, 

Ask your Solebay and the Boyne, 
Ask the Duke, whose iron valour 

With our chivalry did join, 
Ask your Wellington, oh ask him, 

Of our Prince of Orange bold, 
And a tale of nobler spirit 

Will to wond'ring ears be told ; 
And if ever foul invaders 

Threaten your King William's throne, 
If dark Papacy be running. 

Or if Chartists want your own, 
Or whatever may betide you, 

That needs rid of foreign will, 
Only ask of your Dutch neighbours. 

And you'll see Dutch courage still. 



CHAPTER III 

DORDRECHT AND UTRECHT 

By water to Dordrecht — Her four rivers — The milkmaid and the coat of 
arms — The Staple of Dort — Overhanging houses — Albert Cuyp — 
Nicolas Maes — Ferdinand Bol — Ary Scheffer — G. H. Breitner — A 
Dort carver — The Synod of Dort — " The exquisite rancour of theo- 
logians " — La Tidipe Noire — Bernard Mandeville — The exclusive 
Englishman — The Castle of Loevenstein — The escape of Grotius — 
Gorcum's taste outraged — By rail to Utrecht — A free church — The 
great storm of 1674 — Utrecht Cathedral — Jan van Scorel — Paul 
Moreelse — A too hospitable museum. 

DORDRECHT must be approached by water, because 
then one sees her as she was seen so often, and 
painted so often, by her great son Albert Cuyp, and by 
countless artists since. 

I steamed from Rotterdam to Dordrecht on a grey 
windy morning, on a passenger boat bound ultimately for 
Nymwegen. We carried a very mixed cargo. In a cage 
at the bows was a Friesland mare, while the whole of the 
deck at the stern was piled high with motor spirit. Be- 
tween came myriad barrels of beer and other merchandise. 

The course to Dordrecht (which it is simpler to call Dort) 
is up the Maas for some miles ; past shipbuilding yards, 
at Sylverdyk (where is a great heronry) and Kinderdyk ; 
past fishermen dropping their nets for salmon, which they 
may take only on certain days, to give their German 
brethren, higher up the river, a chance ; past meadows 
golden with marsh marigolds ; past every kind of craft, 

(30) 



DORDRECHT'S FOUR RIVERS 31 

most attractive of all being the tjalcks with their brown or 
black sails and green-lined hulls, not unlike those from 
Rochester which swim so steadily in the reaches of the 
Thames about Greenwich. The journey takes an hour 
and a half, the last half-hour being spent in a canal lead- 
ing south from the Maas and ultimately joining Dort's 
confluence of waters. 

It is these rivers that give Dort her peculiar charm. 
There is a little cafe on the quay facing the sunset where 
one may sit and lose oneself in the eternally interesting 
movement of the shipping. I found the town distracting 
under the incessant clanging of the tram bell (yet grass 
grows among the paving-stones between the rails) ; but 
there is no distraction opposite the sunset. On the even- 
ing that I am remembering the sun left a sky of fiery 
orange baiTed by clouds qf essential blackness. 

Dort's rivers are the Maas and the Waal, the Linge and 
the Merwede ; and when in 1549 Philip of Spain visited 
the city, she flourished this motto before him : — 

Me Mosa, me Vahalis, me Linga Morvaque cingunt 
Biternam Batavas virginis ecce fidens. 

The fidelity, at least to Philip and Spain, disappeared ; 
but the four rivers still as of old surround Dort with a 
cincture. 

I must give, in the words of the old writer who tells it, 
the pretty legend which explains the origin of the Dort 
coat of arms : " There is an admirable history concerning 
that beautiful and maiden city of Holland called Dort. 
The Spaniards had intended an onslaught against it, and 
so they had laid thousands of old soldiers in ambush. Not 
far from it there did live a rich farmer who did keep many 
cows in his ground, to furnish Dort with butter and milk. 
The milkmaid coming to milk saw all under the hedges 



32 THE HISTORIC MILKMAID 

soldiers lying ; seemed to take no notice, but went singing 
to her cows ; and having milked, went as merrily away. 
Coming to her master's house, she told what she had seen. 
The master wondering at it, took the maid with him and 
presently came to Dort, told it to the Burgomaster, who 
sent a spy immediately, found it true, and prepared for 
their safety ; sent to the States, who presently sent soldiers 
into the city, and gave order that the river should be let 
in at such a sluice, to lay the country under water. It 
was done, and many Spaniards were drowned and utterly 
disappointed of theii' design, and the town saved. The 
States, in the memory of the merry milkmaid's good service 
to the country, ordered the farmer a large revenue for ever, 
to recompense his loss of house, land, and cattle ; caused 
the coin of the city to have the milkmaid under her cow 
to be engraven, which is to be seen upon the Dort dollar, 
stivers, and doights to this day; and so she is set upon 
the water gate of Dort ; and she had, during her life, and 
her's for ever, an allowance of fifty pounds per annum. A 
noble requital for a virtuous action." 

Dort's great day of prosperity is over ; but once she 
was the richest town in Holland — a result due to the 
privilege of the Staple. In other words, she obtained the 
right to act as intermediary between the rest of Holland 
and the outer world in connection with all the wine, corn, 
timber and whatever else might be imported by way of 
the Rhine. At Dort the cargoes were unloaded. For 
some centuries she enjoyed this privilege, and then in 1618 
Rotterdam began to resent it so acutely as to take to 
arms, and the financial prosperity of the town, which 
would be tenable only by the maintenance of a fleet, 
steadily crumbled. To-day she is contented enough, but 
the cellars of Wyn Straat, once stored with the juices 



A HINT OF VENICE 33 

of Rhenish vineyards, are empty. The Staple is no 
more. 

Dort is perhaps the most painted of all Dutch towns, 
and with reason ; for certainly no other town sits with 
more calm dignity among the waters, nor has any other 
town so quaintly medieval a canal as that which extends 
from end to end, far below the level of the streets, crossed 
by a series of little bridges. Seen from these bridges it is 
the nearest thing to Venice in all Holland — nearer than 
anything in Amsterdam. One may see it not only from 
the bridges, but also from little flights of steps off the main 
street, and everywhere it is beautiful : the walls rising 
from its surface reflected in its depths, green paint splashed 
about with perfect eff'ect, bright window boxes, here and 
there a woman washing clothes, odd gables above and 
bridges in the distance. 

Dordrecht's converging facades, which incline towards 
each other like deaf people, are, I am told, the result not 
of age and sinking foundations, but of design. When 
they were built, very many years ago, the city had a law 
directing that its roofs should so far project beyond the 
perpendicular as to shed their water into the gutter, thus 
enabling the passers-by on the pavement to walk unharmed. 
I cannot give chapter or verse for this comfortable theory ; 
which of course preceded the ingenious Jonas Hanway's 
invention of the umbrella. In a small and very imperfect 
degree the enactment anticipates the covered city of Mr. 
H. G. Wells's vision. A Dutch friend to whom I put 
the point tells me that more probably the preservation of 
bricks and mural carvings was intended, the dryness of 
the wayfarer being quite secondary or unforeseen. 

Dort's greatest artist was Albert Cuyp, born in 1605. 
His body lies in the church of the Augustines in the same 
3 



34 CUYP AND MAES 

city, where he died in 1691 — true to the Dutch painters' 
quiet gift of living and dying in their bii'thplaces. Cuyp 
has been called the Dutch Claude, but it is not a good 
description. He was more human, more simple, than 
Claude. The symbol for him is a scene of cows ; but he 
had great versatility, and painted horses to perfection. 
I have also seen good portraits from his busy brush. 
Faithful to his native town, he painted many pictures of 
Dort. We have two in the National Gallery. I have re- 
produced opposite page 30 his beautiful quiet view of the 
town in the Rvks Museum. Dort has chanored but little 
since then : the schooner would now be a steamer — that is 
almost all. The reproduction can give no adequate sug- 
gestion of Cuyp's gift of diffusing golden light, his most 
precious possession. 

Another Dort painter, below Albert Cuyp in fame, but 
often above him, I think, in interest and power, is Nicolas 
Maes, born in 1632 — a great year in Dutch art, for it saw 
the birth also of Vermeer of Delft and Peter de Hooch. 
Maes, who studied in Rembrandt's studio, was perhaps 
the greatest of all that master's pupils. England, as has 
been so often the case, appreciated Maes more wisely than 
Holland, wdth the result that some of his best pictures 
are here. 

But one must go to the Ryks Museum in Amsterdam to 
see his finest work of all — " The Endless Prayer," No. 1501, 
reproduced on the opposite page. We have at the National 
Gallery or the Wallace Collection no Maes equal to this. 
His " Card player's," however, at the National Gallery, a 
fi'ee bold canvas, more in the manner of Velasquez than of 
his immediate master, is in its way almost as interesting. 

To " The Endless Prayer " one feels that Maes's master, 
Rembrandt, could have added nothing. It is even conceiv- 




THE NEVER-ENDING PRAYER 

NICOLAS MAES 

From tlie picture in the Ryks Museum 



THE SACCHARINE SCHEFFER 35 

able that he might have inj ured it by some touch of asperity. 
From this picture all Newlyn seems to have sprung. 

According to Pilkington, Maes gave up his better and 
more Rembrandtesque manner on account of the objection 
of his sitters to be thus painted. Such are sitters ! 

Dordrecht claims also Ferdinand Bol, the pupil and 
friend of Rembrandt, and the painter of the Four Regents 
of the Leprosy Hospital in the Amsterdam stadhuis. He 
was born in 1611. For a while his pictures were considered 
by connoisseurs to be finer than those of his master. We 
are wiser to-day ; yet Bol had a fine free way that is 
occasionally superb, often united, as in the portrait of Dirck 
van der Waeijen at Rotterdam, to a delicate charm for 
which Rembrandt cared little. His portrait of an as- 
tronomer in our National Gallery is a great work, and at 
the Ryks Museum at Amsterdam his " Roelof Meulenaer," 
No. 543, should not be missed. Bol's favourite sitter seems 
to have been Admiral de Ruyter — if one may j udge by the 
number of his portraits of that sea ravener which Holland 
possesses. 

By a perversity of judgment Dort seems to be more 
proud of Ary SchefFer than of any of her really great sons. 
It is Ary SchefFer's statue — not Albert Cuyp's or Nicolas 
Maes's — which rises in the centre of the town ; and Ary 
Scheffer's sentimental and saccharine inventions fill three 
rooms in the museum. It is amusing in the midst of this 
riot of meek romanticism to remember that Scheffer painted 
Carlyle. Dort has no right to be so intoxicated with the 
excitement of having given birth to SchefFer, for his father 
was a German, a mere sojourner in the Dutch town. 

The old museum of Dort has just been moved to a new 
building in the Lindengracht, and in honour of the event 
a loan exhibition of modern paintings and drawings was 



36 A CARVER OF WOOD 

opened last summer. The exhibition gave peculiar op- 
portunity for studying the work of G. H. Breitner, the 
painter of Amsterdam canals. The master of a fine sombre 
impressionism, Breitner has made such scenes his own. 
But he can do also more tender and subtle things. In 
this collection was a little oil sketch of a mere which would 
not have suffered had it been hung between a Corot and a 
Daubigny ; and a water-colour drawing of a few cottages 
and a river that could not have been strengthened by any 
hand. 

Another artist of Dort was Jan Terween Aertz, born 
in 1511, whose carvings in the choir of the Groote Kerk 
are among its chief glories. It is amazing that such spirit 
and movement can be suggested in wood. That the very 
semblance of life can be captured by a painter is wonderful 
enough ; but there seems to me something more ex- 
traordinary in the successful conquest of the difficulties 
which confront an artist of such ambition as this Dort 
carver. His triumph is even more striking than that of 
the sculptor in marble. The sacristan of Dort's Groote 
Kerk seems more eager to show a brass screen and a gold 
christening bowl than these astounding choir stalls; but 
tastes always differ. 

By the irony of fate it was Dort — the possessor of 
Terween's carving of the Triumph of Charles V. (a pendant 
to the Triumph of the Church and the Eucharist) — that, 
in 1572, only a few years after the carving was made,|held 
the Congress which virtually decided the fate of Spain in 
the Netherlands. Brill had begun the revolution (as we 
shall see in our last chapter). Flushing was the first to 
follow suit, Enkhuisen then caught the fever ; but these 
were individual efforts : it was the Congress of Dort that 
authorised and systematised the revolt. 




THE GREAT CHURCH, ]>^Rr 



THE SYNOD OF DORT 37 

The scheme of this book precludes a consecutive account 
of the great struggle between Holland and Spain — a 
struggle equal almost to that between Holland and her 
other implacable foe, the sea. I assume in the reader a 
sufficient knowledge of history to be able to follow the 
course of the contest as it moves backwards and forwards 
in these pages — the progress of the narrative being dic- 
tated by the sequence of towns in the itinerary rather 
than by the sequence of events in time. The death of 
William the Silent, for example, has to be set forth in the 
chapter on Delft, where the tragedy occurred, and where he 
lies buried, long before we reach the description of the siege 
of Haarlem and the capture of De Bossu off Hoorn, while 
for the insurrection of Brill, which was the first tangible 
token of Dutch independence, we have to wait until the 
last chapter of all. The reader who is endowed with 
sufficient history to reconcile these divagations should, I 
think, by the time the book is finished, have (with Motley's 
assistance) a vivid idea of this great war, so magnificently 
waged by Holland, which lowers in the background of 
almost every Dutch town. 

A later congress at Dort was the famous Synod in 
1618-19, in which a packed house of Gomarians or Contra- 
Remonstrants, pledged to carry out the wishes of Maurice, 
Prince of Orange, the Stadtholder, affected to subject the 
doctrines of the Arminians or Remonstrants to consci- 
entious examination. These doctrines as contained in the 
five articles of the Arminians were as follows, in the words 
of Davies, the historian of Holland : " First, that God had 
resolved from the beginning to elect into eternal life those 
who through his grace believed in Jesus Christ, and con- 
tinued stedfast in the faith ; and, on the contrary, had 
resolved to leave the obstinate and unbelieving to eternal 



38 CHRISTIANS IN CONVOCATION 

damnation ; secondly, that Christ had died for the whole 
world, and obtained for all remission of sins and reconcilia- 
tion with God, of which, nevertheless, the faithful only are 
made partakers ; thirdly, that man cannot have a saving 
faith by his own free will, since while in a state of sin he 
cannot think or do good, but it is necessary that the grace 
of God, through Chiist, should regenerate and renew the 
understanding and affections ; fourthly, that this grace is 
the beginning, continuance, and end of salvation, and that 
all good works proceed from it, but that it is not irre- 
sistible ; fifthly, that although the faithful receive by grace 
sufficient strength to resist Satan, sin, the world, and the 
flesh, yet man can by his own act fall away from this state 
of grace." 

After seven months wrangling and bitterness, at a cost 
of a million guelders, the Synod came to no conclusion 
more Christian than that no punishment was too bad for 
the holder of such opinions, which were dangerous to the 
State and subversive of true religion. The result was that 
Holland's Calvinism was intensified ; Barne veldt (who had 
been in prison all the time) was, as we shall see, beheaded ; 
Grotius and Hoogenbeets were sentenced to imprisonment 
for life ; and Episcopius, the Remonstrant leader at the 
Synod, was, together with many others, banished. Epis- 
copius heard his sentence with composure, merely remark- 
ing, " God will require of you an account of your conduct 
at the great day of His judgment. There you and the 
whole Synod will appear. May you never meet with a 
judge such as the Synod has been to us." 

Davies has a story of Episcopius which is too good to 
be omitted. On banishment he was given his expenses by 
the States. Among the dollars given to Episcopius was 
one, coined apparently in the Duchy of Brunswick, bearing 



ALEXANDRE THE GREAT 39 

on the one side the figure of Truth, with the motto, " Truth 
overcomes all things " ; and on the reverse, "In well-doing 
fear no one ". Episcopius was so struck with the coincidence 
that he had the coin set in gold and carefully preserved. 

It is impossible for any one who has read La Tulipe 
Noire not to think of that story when wandering about 
Dort ; but it is a mistake to read it in the town itself, for 
the Great Alexandre's fidelity to fact will not bear the 
strain. Dumas never wore his historical, botanical, geo- 
graphical and ethnographical knowledge more like a flower 
than in this brave but breathless story. In BoxteFs envy 
we may perhaps believe ; in Gryphon's savagery ; and in the 
craft and duplicity of the Stadtholder ; but if ever a French 
philosopher and a French grisette masqueraded as a Dutch 
horticulturist and a Frisian waiting-maid they are Cornelius 
van Baerle and his Rosa ; and if ever a tulip grew by magic 
rather than by the laws of nature it was the tulipe noire. 
No matter ; there is but one Dumas. According to Flotow 
the composer, William III. of Holland told Dumas the 
story of the black tulip at his coronation in 1849, remark- 
ing that it was time that the novelist turned his attention 
to Holland ; but two arguments are urged against this 
origin, one being that Paul Lacroix — the "Bibliophile 
Jacob " — is said, on better authority, to have supplied the 
germ of the romance, and the other (which is even better 
evidence), that had the stimulus come from a monarch 
Dumas would hardly have refrained from saying so (and 
more) in the preface of the book. 

Cornelius de Witt, whose tragedy is at the threshold 
of the romance, was apprehended at Dort, on his bed of 
sickness, and carried thence to the Hague, to be imprisoned 
in the Gevangenpoort, which we shall visit, and torn to 
pieces by the populace close by. 



40 TO GORCUM BY RIVeR 

Another literary association. From Dort came the 
EngHsh cynical writer Bernai'd Mandeville, born in 1670, 
author of The Fable of the Bees, that very shrewd and 
advanced commentary upon national hypocrisies — so ad- 
vanced, indeed, that several of the more revolutionary of 
the thinkers of the present day, whose ideas are thought 
pecuharly modern, have not really got beyond it. After 
leaving; Levden as a doctor of medicine, Mandeville settled 
in England, somewhen at the end of the seventeenth cen- 
tury, and became well known in the Coffee Houses as a wit 
and o;ood fellow. 

We are a curious people when we travel. At Dort I 
heard a voung Englishman inquiring of the landlord how 
best to spend his Sunday. " One can hardly go on one of 
the river excursions," he remarked; "they are so mixed." 
And the landlord, with a lunch at two florins, fifty, in his 
mind, which it was desirable that as many persons as 
possible should eat and pay for, heartily agi-eed with him. 
None the less it seemed well to join the excursion to 
Gorinchem ; and thence we steamed on a fine cloudy 
Sunday, the river whipped grey by a strong cross wind, 
and the little ships that beat up and passed us, all aslant. 
At Gorinchem (pronounced Gorcum) we changed at once 
into another steamer, a sorry tub, as wide as it was short, 
and steamed to Woudrichem (called Worcum) hoping to 
explore the fortress of Loevenstein. But Loevenstein is 
enisled and beyond the reach of the casual visitor, and 
we had therefore to sit in the upper room of the Belle- 
vue inn, overlooking the river, and await the tub's de- 
liberate return, while the tugs and the bai'ges trailed past. 
Save for modifications brought about by steam, the scene 
can be now little different fi'om that in the days when 
Hugo Grotius was imprisoned in the castle. 




A LADY 

PAULUS MOREELSE 

From the picture in the Ryks Museum 



A CROWN TO HER HUSBAND 41 

The philosopher's escape is one of the best things in 
the history of wives. Two ameliorations were permitted 
him by Maurice — the presence of the Vrouw Grotius and 
the solace of books. As it happened, this lenience could 
not have been less fortunately (or, for Grotius, more for- 
tunately) framed. Books came continually to the prisoner, 
which, when read, were returned in the same chest that 
conveyed his linen to the Gorcum wash. At first the guard 
carefully examined each departing load ; but after a while 
the form was omitted. Grotius's wife, a woman of no common 
order (when asked why she did not sue for her husband's 
pardon, she had replied, " I will not do it : if he have 
deserved it let them strike off his head"), was quick to 
notice the negligence of the guard, and giving out that 
her husband was bedridden, she concealed him in the chest, 
and he was dumped on a tjalck and earned over to Gorcum. 
While on his journey he had the shuddering experience of 
hearing some one remark that the box was heavy enough to 
have a man in it ; but it was his only danger. A Gorcum 
friend extricated him ; and, disguised as a carpenter armed 
with a footrule, he set forth on his travels to Antwerp. Once 
certain that Grotius was safe, his wife informed the guard, 
and the hue and cry was raised. But it was raised in vain. 
At first there was a suggestion that the lady should be 
retained in his stead, but all Holland applauded her deed 
and she was permitted to go free. 

The river, as I have said, must be still much the same 
as in Grotius's day ; while the two towns Gorcum and 
Worcum cluster about their noble church towers as of 
old. Worcum is hardly altered; but Gorcum's railway 
and factories have enlarged her borders. She has now 
twelve thousand inhabitants, some eleven thousand of 
whom were in the streets when, the tub having at length 



42 THE FATAL HAT 

crawled back with us, we walked through them to the 
station. 

Odd how one nation's prettiness is another's grotesque. 
My companion was wearing one of those comely straw hats 
trimmed with roses which we call Early Victorian, and which 
the hot summer of 1904 brought into fashion again on 
account of then* pecuhar suitability to keep off the sun. 
In England we think them becoming ; upon certain heads 
they are charming. But no head must wear such a hat at 
Gorcum unless it would court disaster. The town is gay 
and spruce, bright as a new pin ; the people are outrageous. 
I suppose that the hat turned down at the precise point 
at which, according to Gorcum's canons of taste, it should 
have turned up. Whatever it did was unpardonable, and 
we had to be informed of the solecism. We were informed 
in various ways : the men whistled, the women sniggered, 
the gu'ls laughed, the children shouted and ran beside us. 
The same hat had been disregarded by the sweet-mannered 
friendly Middelburgians ; it had raised no smile at Breda. 
At Dordrecht, it is true, eyes had been opened wide ; at 
Bergen-op-Zoom mouths had opened too ; but such atten- 
tion was nothing compared with Gorcima's pains to make 
two strangers uncomfortable. 

As it happened, we had philosophy, and the discomfort 
was very slight. Indeed, after a while, as we ran the 
gauntlet to the station, annoyance gave way to interest. 
^Ve found ourselves looking ahead for distant wayfarers 
who had not yet tasted the rare joy which rippled like a 
ship's wake behind us. We waited for the ecstatic moment 
when their faces should light with the joke. Sometimes 
a mother standing at the door would see us and call to 
her family to come— and come quickly, if they would not 
be disappointed ! Women, lurking behind Holland's blue 



THE GAUNTLET RUN 43 

gauze blinds, would be seen to break away with a hasty 
summonino; movement. Children down side streets who 
had just realised theii' exceptional fortune would be heard 
shouting the glad tidings to their friends. The porter who 
wheeled our luggage was stopped again and again to 
answer questions concerning his fantastic employers. 

In course of time — it is a long way to the station — we 
grew to feel a shade of pique if any one passed us and took 
no notice. To bulk so hugely in the public eye became a 
new pleasure. I had not known before what Britannia 
must feel like on the summit of the largest of the cars 
in a circus procession. 

I am convinced that such costly and equivocal success as 
the British arms achieved over the Boers had nothing to do 
with Gorcum's feelings. The town's esthetic ideals were 
honestly outraged, and it took the simplest means of 
making its protest. 

We did not mean to wait at the station ; having 
left our luggage there, we had intended to explore the 
town. But there is a limit even to the passion for notoriety, 
and we had reached it, passed it. We read and wrote 
letters in that waiting-room for nearly three hours. 

At Gorcum was born, in 1637, Jan van der Hey den, a 
very attractive painter of street scenes, combining exactitude 
of detail with rich colour, who used to get Andreas van 
der Velde to put in the figures. He has a view of Cologne 
in the National Gallery which is exceedingly pleasing, and 
a second version in the Wallace Collection. I shall never 
forget his birthplace. 

We came into Utrecht in the evening. At Culemberg 
the country begins to grow very green and rich : smooth 
meadows and vast woods as far as one can see : plovers all 
the way. The light transfiguring this scene was exactly 



U UTRECHT CATHEDRAL 

the golden light which one sees in Albert Cuyp's most 
peaceful landscapes. 

When I was last on this journey the time was spring, and 
the sliding, pointed roofs of the ricks were at their lowest, 
with their four poles high and naked above them, like 
scaffolding. But now, in August, they were all resting on 
the top pegs, a solid square tower of hay beneath each ; 
looking in the evening light for all the world as if every 
farmer had his private Norman church. 

The note of Utrecht is superior satisfaction. It has 
discreet verdant parks, a wonderful campanile, a Univer- 
sity, large comfortable houses, carriages and pairs. Its 
cathedral is the only church in Holland (with the exception 
of the desecrated fane at Veere) for the privilege of enter- 
ing which I was not asked to pay. I have an uneasy 
feeling that it was an oversight, and that if by any chance 
this statement meets an authoritative eye some one may 
be removed to one of the penal establishments and steps 
be taken to collect my debt. But so it was. And yet it 
is possible that the free right of entrance is intentional ; 
since to charge for a building so unpardonably disfigured 
would be a hardy action. The Gothic arches have great 
beauty, but it is impossible from any point to get more 
than a broken view on account of the high painted wooden 
walls with which the pews have been enclosed. 

The cathedral is only a fragment; the nave fell in, 
isolating the bell tower, during a tempest in 1674, and by 
that time all interest in churches as beautiful and sacred 
buildings having died out of Holland, never to return, no 
effort was made to restore it. But it must, before the 
storm, have been superb, and of a vastness superior to any 
in the country. 

I find a very pleasant passage upon Holland's great 




■'^ 



DUTCH ARCHITECTURAL GEMS 45 

churches, and indeed upon its best architecture in general, 
in an essay on Utrecht Cathedral by Mr. L. A. Corbeille. 
" Gothic churches on a grand scale are as abundant in the 
Netherlands as they are at home, but to find one of them 
drawn or described in any of the otherwise comprehensive 
architectural works, which appear from time to time, is 
the rarest of experiences. The Hollanders are accused of 
mere apishness in employing the Gothic style, and of 
downright dulness in apprehending its import and beauty. 
Yet a man who has found that bit of Rotterdam which 
beats Venice ; who has seen, from under Delft's lindens on 
a summer evening, the image of the Oude Kerk's leaning 
tower in the still canal, and has gone to bed, perchance 
to awake in the moonlight while the Nieuwe Kerk's 
many bells are rippling a silver tune over the old roofs 
and gables ; who has drunk his beer full opposite the 
stadhuis at Leyden, and seen Haarlem's huge church 
across magnificent miles of gaudy tulips, and watched from 
a brown-sailed boat on the Zuider Zee a buoy on the horizon 
grow into the water-gate of Hoorn ; who knows his Gouda 
and Bois-le-duc and Alkmaar and Kampen and Utrecht : 
this man does not fret over wasted days." 

Mr. Corbeille continues, later : " Looking down a side 
street of Rotterdam at the enormous flank of St. Lawrence's, 
and again at St. Peter's in Leyden, it seems as if all the 
bricks in the world have been built up in one place. Apart 
from their smaller size, bricks appear far more numerous 
in a wall than do blocks of stone, because they make a 
stronger contrast with the mortar. In the laborious 
articulation of these millions of clay blocks one first finds 
Egypt ; then quickly remembers how indigenous it all is, 
and how characteristic of the untiring Hollander, who 
rules the waves even more proudly than the Briton, and 



46 JAN VAN SCOREL 

has cheated them of the very gi'ound beneath his feet. 
And if sermons may be found in bricks as well as stones, 
one has a thouo-ht while lookins; at them about Christianitv 
itself. Certainly there is often pitiful littleness and short- 
comings in the individual behever, just as each separate 
brick of these millions is stained or worn or fractured ; and 
yet the Christian Church, august and significant, still 
towers before men ; even as these old blocks of clay com- 
pile vastly and undeniably in an overpowering whole." 

Among a huddle of bad and indifferent pictures in the 
Kunstliefde Museum is a series of fom^ long paintings 
by Jan van Scorel (whom we met at Rotterdam), represent- 
ing a band of pilgrims who travelled from Utrecht to 
Jerusalem in the sixteenth centurv. Two of these pictures 
are reproduced on the opposite page, the principal figui-e 
in the lower one — in the middle, in white — being Jan van 
Scorel himself. The faces are all such as one can believe in ; 
just so, we feel, did the pilgrims look, and what a thousand 
pities there was no Jan van Scorel to accompany Chaucer ! 
These are the best pictures in Utrecht, which cannot have 
any o-reat interest in art or it would not allow that tramwav 
through its bell tower. In the reproduction the faces neces- 
sarily become very small, but they are still full of character, 
and one may see the sympathetic hand of a master in all. 

Jan van Scorel was only a settler in Utrecht ; the most 
illustrious citizen to whom it gave birth was Pauius 
Moreelse, but the city has, I think, only one of his pictures, 
and that not his best. He was born in 1571, and he died 
at Utrecht in 1638. His portraits are very rich : either 
he had interesting sitters or he imparted interest to them. 
Opposite page 40 I have reproduced his portrait of a 
lady in the Ryks Museum at Amsterdam, which amongst 
so many fine pictures one may perhaps at the outset treat 



f?*^^ 






W*^m. 






.^^^ 



V • 




A RECEPTIVE MUSEUM 47 

with too little ceremony, but which undoubtedly will assert 
itself. It is a picture that, as we say, grows on one : the 
Unknown Lady becomes more and more mischievous, more 
and more necessary. 

Th^ little Archiepiscopal Museum at Utrecht is as small 
— or as large — as a museum should be : one can see it 
comfortably. It has many treasures, all ecclesiastical, and 
seventy different kinds of lace ; but to me it is memorable 
for the panel portrait of a woman by Jan van Scorel, a 
very sweet sedate face, beautifully painted, which one would 
like to coax into a less religious mood. 

Utrecht is very proud of a wide avenue of lime trees — a 
triple avenue, as one often sees in Holland — called the Malie- 
baan ; but more beautiful are the semi-circular Oude and 
Nieuwe Grachts, with their moat-like canals laving the walls 
of serene dignified houses, each gained by its own bridge. 

At the north end of the Maliebaan is the Hoogeland 
Park, with a fringe of spacious villas that might be in 
Kensington ; and here is the Antiquarian Museum, notable 
among its very miscellaneous riches, which resemble the 
bankrupt stock of a curiosity dealer, for the most elaborate 
dolls' house in Holland — perhaps in the world. Its date 
is 1680, and it represents accurately the home of a wealthy 
aristocratic doll of that day. Nothing was forgotten by 
the designer of this miniature palace ; special paintings, very 
nude, were made for its salon, and the humblest kitchen 
utensils are not missing. I thought the most interesting 
rooms the office where the Major Domo sits at his intricate 
labours, and the store closet. The museum has many very 
valuable treasures, but so many poor pictures and articles 
— all presents or legacies — that one feels that it must be 
the rule to accept whatever is offered, without any scrutiny 
of the horse's teeth. 



CHAPTER IV 

DELFT 

To Delft by canal — House-cleaning by immersion — The New Church — 
William the Silent's tomb — His assassin — The story of the crime — 
The tomb of Grotius — Dutch justice — The Old Church — Admiral 
Tromp — The mission of the broom — The sexton's pipe — Vermeer 
of Delft — Lost masterpieces — The wooden petticoat — Modern Delft 
pottery and old breweries. 

I TRAVELLED to Delft from Rotterdam in a little 
steam passenger barge, very long and nan'ow to fit 
it for navigating the locks ; which, as it is, it scrapes. 
We should have started exactly at the hour were it not 
that a very small boy on the bank interrupted one of the 
crew who was unmooring the boat by asking for a light 
for his cigar, and the transaction delayed us a minute. 

It rained dismally, and I sat in the stuffy cabin, either 
peering at the country through the window or talking with 
a young Dutchman, the only other traveller. At one 
village a boy was engaged in house-cleaning by immersing 
the furniture, piece by piece, bodily in the canal. Now 
and then we met a barge in full sail on its way to Rotter- 
dam, or overtook one being towed towards Delft, the man 
at the rope bent double under what looked like an im- 
possible task. 

Little guides to the tombs in both the Old and the New 
Church of Delft have been prepared for the convenience of 
visitors by Dr. G. Mon-e, and translations in English have 

(48) 



WILLIAM THE SILENT'S TOMB 49 

been made by D. Goslings, both gentlemen, I presume, 
being local savants. The New Church contains the more 
honoured dust, for there repose not only William the 
Silent, who was perhaps the greatest of modern patriots 
and rulers, but also Grotius. 

The tomb of WiUiam the Silent is an elaborate erection, 
of stone and marble, statuary and ornamentation. Justice 
and Liberty, Religion and Valour, represented by female 
figures, guard the tomb. It seems to me to lack impressive- 
ness : the man beneath was too fine to need all this display 
and talent. More imposing is the simplicity of the monu- 
ment to the great scholar near by. Yet remembering the 
struggle of William the Silent against Spain and Rome, it 
is impossible to stand unmoved before the marble figure of 
the Prince, lying there for all time with his dog at his feet 
— the dog who, after the noble habit of the finest of such 
animals, refused food and drink when his master died, and 
so faded away rather than owe allegiance and affection to 
a lesser man. 

There is an eloquent Latin epitaph in gold letters on 
the tomb ; but a better epitaph is to be found in the last 
sentence of Motley's great history, perhaps the most 
perfect last sentence that any book ever had : " As long 
as he lived, he was the guiding-star of a whole brave nation, 
and when he died the little children cried in the streets ". 

Opposite the Old Church is the Gymnasium Publicum. 
Crossing the court-yard and entering the confronting door- 
way, one is instantly on the very spot where William the 
Silent, whose tomb we have just seen, met his death on 
July 10th, 1584. 

The Prince had been living at Delft for a while, in this 
house, his purpose partly being to be in the city for the 
christening of his son Frederick Henry. To him on July 



50 AN EMBARRASSMENT OF ASSASSINS 

8th came a special messenger from the French Court with 
news of the death of the Duke of Anjou ; the messenger, 
a 'protege of the Prince's, according to his own story being 
Francis Guion, a mild and pious Protestant, whose father 
had been martyred as a Calvinist. How far removed was 
the truth Motley shall tell : " Francis Guion, the Calvinist, 
son of the martyred Calvinist, was in reality Balthazar 
Gerard, a fanatical Catholic, whose father and mother 
were still living at Villefans in Burgundy. Before reaching 
man's estate, he had formed the design of murdering the 
Prince of Orange, ' who, so long as he lived, seemed like to 
remain a rebel against the Catholic King, and to make 
every effort to disturb the repose of the Roman Catholic 
Apostolic religion '. When but twenty years of age, he 
had struck his dagger with all his might into a door, ex- 
claiming, as he did so, ' Would that the blow had been in 
the heart of Orange ! ' " 

In 1582, however, the news had gone out that Jaureguy 
had killed the Prince at Antwerp, and Gerard felt that his 
mission was at an end. But when the Prince recovered, 
his murderous enthusiasm redoubled, and he offered himself 
formally and with matter-of-fact precision to the Prince 
of Parma as heaven's minister of vengeance. The Prince, 
who had long been seeking such an emissary, at first de- 
clined the alliance : he had become too much the prey of 
soldiers of fortune who represented themselves to be expert 
murderers but in whom he could put no trust. In Motley's 
words : " Many unsatisfactory assassins had presented them- 
selves from time to time, and Alexander had paid money in 
hand to various individuals — Italians, Spaniards, Lorrainers, 
Scotchmen, Enghshmen, who had generally spent the sums 
received without attempting the job. Others were sup- 
posed to be still engaged in the enterprise, and at that 



GERARD'S OPPORTUNITY 51 

moment there were four persons — each unknown to the 
others, and of different nations — in the city of Delft, seeking 
to compass the death of WiUiam the Silent. Shag-eared, 
military, hirsute ruffians, ex-captains of free companies and 
such marauders, were daily offering their services ; there 
was no lack of them, and they had done but little. How 
should Parma, seeing this obscure, undersized, thin-bearded, 
runaway clerk before him, expect pith and energy from him ? 
He thought him quite unfit for an enterprise of moment, 
and declared as much to his secret councillors and to the 
King." 

Gerard, however, had supporters, and in time the 
Prince of Parma came to take a more favourable view of 
his qualifications and sincerity, but his confidence was 
insufficient to warrant him in advancing any money for 
the purpose. The result was that Gerard, whose domin- 
ating idea amounted to mania, proceeded in his own way. 
His first step was to ingratiate himself with the Prince of 
Orange. This he did by a series of misrepresentations and 
fraud, and was recommended by the Prince to the Signeur 
of Schoneval, who on leaving Delft on a mission to the 
Duke of Anjou, added him to his suite. 

The death of the Duke gave Gerard his chance, and he 
obtained permission to carry despatches to the Prince of 
Orange, as we have seen. The Prince received him in his 
bedroom, after his wont. Motley now relates the tragedy : 
" Here was an opportunity such as he (Gerard) had never 
dared to hope for. The arch-enemy to the Church and to 
the human race, whose death would confer upon his de- 
stroyer wealth and nobility in this world, besides a crown 
of glory in the next, lay unarmed, alone, in bed, before the 
man who had thirsted seven long years for his blood. 

" Balthazar could scarcely control his emotions suf- 



52 THE PATH MADE EASY 

ficiently to answer the questions which the Piince addressed 
to him concerning the death of Anjou, but Orange, deeplv 
engaged with the despatches, and with the reflections 
which tiieh- deeply important contents suggested, did not 
observe the countenance of the humble Calvinistic exile, 
who had been recently recommended to his pati'onage bv 
\illiers. Gerard had. moreover, made no preparation for 
an interview so entii'elv unexpected, had come unarmed, 
and had formed no plan for escape. He was oblis^ed to 
forego his prey most when within his reach, and after com- 
municating all the information which the Prince required, 
he was dismissed fi-om the chamber, 

"It was Sunday morning, and the bells were tolling for 
church. Upon leaving the house he loitered about the court- 
yard, fui-tively examining the premises, so that a sergeant 
of halberdiers asked him whv he was waiting there. 
Balthazar meekly replied that he was desirous of attending 
divine woi-ship in the church opposite, but added, pointing 
to his shabby and travel-stained attire, that, without at 
least a new pair of shoes and stockings, he was untit to 
join the congregation. Insignificant as ever, the small, 
pious, dusty stranger excited no suspicion in the mind of the 
good-natui^d sergeant. He forthwith spoke of the want 
of Gerard to an officer, by whom thev were communicated 
to Orange himself, and the Prince instantly ordered a sum 
of money to be given him. Thus Balthazar obtained fi-om 
William's charity what Paima's thrift had denied — a fund 
for caiTying out his purpose 1 

" Next morning, with the money thus procured he pm*- 
chased a pair of pistols, or small carabines, fi-om a soldier, 
chaffering long about the price because the vendor could 
not supplv a particular kind ot chopped bullets or slugs 
which he desired. Before the sunset of the followins: day 



JULY 10, 1584 53 

that soldier had stabbed himself to the heart, and died 
despairing, on hearing for what purpose the pistols had 
been bought. 

*' On Tuesday, the 10th of July, 1584, at about half-past 
twelve, the Prince, with his wife on his arm, and followed 
by the ladies and gentlemen of his family, was going to 
the dining-room. William the Silent was dressed upon 
that day, according to his usual custom, in very plain 
fashion. He wore a wide-leaved, loosely shaped hat of 
dark felt, with a silken cord round the crown, — such as had 
been worn by the Beggars in the early days of the revolt. 
A high ruff encircled his neck, from which also depended 
one of the Beggars' medals, with the motto, ' Fideles au 
roy jusqit^a la hesace^ while a loose surcoat of gray frieze 
cloth, over a tawny leather doublet, with wide slashed 
underclothes completed his costume.^ 

** Gerard presented himself at the doorway, and demanded 
a passport. The Princess, struck with the pale and agi- 
tated countenance of the man, anxiously questioned her 
husband concerning the stranger. The Prince carelessly 
observed, that ' it was merely a person who came for a 
passport,' ordering, at the same time, a secretary forthwith 
to prepare one. The Princess, still not relieved, observed 
in an undertone that ' she had never seen so villanous a 
countenance ". Orange, however, not at all impressed with 
the appearance of Gerard, conducted himself at table with 
his usual cheerfulness, conversing much with the burgo- 
master of Leewarden, the only guest present at the family 
dinner, concerning the political and religious aspects of 
Friesland. At two o'clock the company rose from table. 
The Prince led the way, intending to pass to his private 

^ The whole dress worn by the Prince on this tragical occasion is still 
to be seen at The Hague in the National Museum. — Motley. 



54 THE PRINCE'S LAST WORDS 

apartments above. The dining-room, which was on the 
ground-floor, opened into a Httle square vestibule which 
communicated, through an arched passage-way, with the 
main entrance into the court-yard. This vestibule was 
also directly at the foot of the wooden staircase leading 
to the next floor, and was scarcely six feet in width.^ 

" Upon its left side, as one approached the stairway, was 
an obscure arch, sunk deep in the wall, and completely 
in the shadow of the door. Behind this arch a portal 
opened to the narrow lane at the side of the house. The 
stairs themselves were completely lighted by a large 
window, half-way up the flight. The Prince came from the 
dining-room, and began leisurely to ascend. He had only 
reached the second stair, when a man emerged from the 
sunken arch, and, standing within a foot or two of him, 
discharged a pistol full at his heart." 

When Jaureguy had fired at the Prince two years earlier, 
the ball passing through his jaw, the Prince, as he faltered 
under the shock, cried, " Do not kill him — I forgive 
him my death ! " But he had no time to express any 
such plea for his assailant after Gerard's cruel shots. 
"Three balls," says Motley, "entered his body, one of 
which, passing quite through him, struck with violence 
against the wall beyond. The Prince exclaimed in 
French, as he felt the wound, 'O my God, have mercy 
upon my soul ! O my God, have mercy upon this poor 
people ! ' 

"These were the last words he ever spoke, save that 
when his sister, Catherine of Schwartzburgh, immediately 
afterwards asked him if he commended his soul to Jesus 
Christ, he faintly answered, ' Yes '." 

1 The house now called the Prinsen Hof (but used as a barrack) still 
presents nearly the sarne appearance as it did in 158^. — Motley, 



THE TOMB OF GROTIUS 55 

Never has the pistol done worse work. The Prince was 
only fifty-one ; he was full of vigour ; his character had 
never been stronger, his wisdom never more mature. Had 
he lived a few years longer the country would have been 
saved years of war and misery. 

One may stand to-day exactly where the Prince stood 
when he was shot. The mark of a bullet in the wall is 
still shown. The dining-room, from which he had come, 
now contains a collection of relics of his great career. 

Let us return to the New Church, past the statue of 
feotius in the great square, in order to look again at that 
philosopher's memorial. Grotius, who was born at Delft, 
was extraordinarily precocious. He went to Leyden Uni- 
versity and studied under Scaliger when he was eleven ; 
at sixteen he was practising as a lawyer at The Hague. 
This is D. Goslings' translation of the inscription on his 
tomb : — 

Sacred to Hugo Grotius 

The Wonder of Europe, the sole astonishment of the learned world, 
the splendid work of nature surpassing itself, the summit of genius, the 
image of virtue, the ornament raised above mankind, to whom the de- 
fended honour of true religion gave cedars from the top of Lebanon, 
whom Mars adorned with laurels and Pallas with olive branches, when 
he had published the right of war and peace : whom the Thames and the 
Seine regarded as the wonder of the Dutch, and whom the court of 
Sweden took in its service : Here lies Grotius. Shun this tomb, ye 
who do not burn with love of the Muses and your country. 

Grotius can hardly have burned with love of the sense of 
justice of his own country, for reasons with which we are 
familiar. His sentence of life-long imprisonment, passed 
by Prince Maurice of Orange, who lies hard by in the 
same church, was passed in 1618. His escape in the chest 
(like General Monk in Twenty Years After) was his last 
deed on Dutch soil. Thenceforward he lived in Paris and 



56 TROMP'S BROOM 

Sweden, England and Germany, writing his De Jure Belli 
et Pae'is and other works. He died in 1645, when Holland 
claimed him again, as Oxford has claimed Shelley. 

The principal tomb in the Old Church of Delft is that 
of Admiral Tromp, the Dutch Nelson. While quite a 
child he was at sea with his father off the coast of Guinea 
when an English cruiser captured the vessel and made him 
a cabin boy. Tromp, if he felt any resentment, certaiuly 
lived to pay it back, for he was our victor in thirty-three 
naval ensiagements, the last being the final struc^o-le in the 
English-Dutch war, when he defeated Monk off Texel in 
the summer of 1653, and was killed by a bullet in his 
heart. The battle is depicted in bas-relief on the tomb, 
but the eve searches the marble in vain for any remiader 
of the broom which the admiral is said to have lashed to 
his masthead as a sign to the English that it was his 
habit to sweep their seas. The stoiy may be a m\i:h, but 
the Dutch sculptor who omitted to remember it and beheve 
in it is no friend of mine. 

This is D. Goslings' translation of Tromp's epitaph : — 

For an Eternal Memorial 

You, who love the Dutch, virtue and true labour, read and mourn. 

The ornament of the Dutch people, the formidable in battle, lies low, 
he who never lay dov^n in his life, and taught by his example that a 
commander should die standing, he. the love of his fellow-citizens, the 
terror of his enemies, the wonder of the ocean. 

Maarten Harpertszoon Tromp, a name comprehending more praise 
than this stone can contain, a stone truly too narrow for him, for whom 
East and West were a school, the sea the occasion of triumph, the whole 
world the scene of his glorj', he, a certain ruin to pirates, the successful 
protector of commerce; useful through his familiarit}^, not low; after 
having ruled the sailors and the soldiers, a rough sort of people, in a 
fatherly and efficaciously benignant manner ; after Sft\- battles in which 
he was commander or in which he played a great part ; after incredible 
\-ictories, after the highest honours though below his merits, he at last 



TWO EPITAPHS 57 

in the war against the English, nearly victor but certainly not beaten, 
on the loth of August, 1653, of the Christian era, at the age of fifty-six 
years, has ceased to live and to conquer. 

The fathers of the United Netherlands have erected this memorial in 
honour of this highly meritorious hero. 

There lie in Delft's Old Church also Pieter Pieterzoon 
Hein, Lieut. -Admiral of Holland ; and Elizabeth van 
Marnix, wife of the governor of Bergen-op-Zoom, whose 
epitaph runs thus : — 

Here am I lying, I Elizabeth, born of an illustrious and ancient 
family, wife to Morgan, I, daughter of Marnix, a name not unknown in 
the world, which, in spite of time, will always remain. There is virtue 
enough in having pleased one husband, which his so precious love testi- 
fies. 

The tomb of Antony van Leeuwenhock, the inventor of 
the microscope, is also to be seen in the church. " As 
everybody, O Wanderer," the epitaph concludes, " has re- 
spect for old age and wonderful parts, tread this spot 
with respect ; here grey science lies buried with Leeuwen- 
hock." 

Each of the little guide-books, which are given to every 
purchaser of a ticket to enter the churches, is prefaced by 
four " Remarks," of which I quote the third and fourth : — 

3. Visitors are requested not to bestow gifts on the sexton or his 
assistants, as the former would lose his situation, if he accepted ; he is 
responsible for his assistants. 

4. The sexton or his assistants will treat the visitors with the greatest 
politeness. 

I am not certain about the truth of either of these clausesj, 
particularly the last. Let me explain. 

The sexton of the Old Church humed me past these 
tombs with some impatience. I should naturally have 
taken my time, but his attitude of haste made it im- 
perative to do so. Sextons must not be in a hurry. After 



58 THE SEXTON'S PIPE 

a while I found out why he chafed : he wanted to smoke. 
He fumbled his pipe and scraped his boots upon the stones. 
I studied the monuments with a scrutiny that grew more 
and more minute and elaborate; and soon his matches 
were in his hand. I wanted to tell him that if I were the 
only obstacle he might smoke to his heart's content, but 
it seemed to be more amusing to watch and wait. My 
return to the tomb of the ingenious constructor of the 
microscope settled the question. Probably no one had 
ever spent more than half a minute on poor Leeuwenhock 
before ; and when I turned round again the pipe was 
alight. The sexton also was a changed man : before, he 
had been taciturn, contemptuous ; now he was communi- 
cative, gay. He told me that the organist was blind — 
but none the less a fine player ; he led me briskly to the 
carved pulpit and pointed out, with some exaltation, the 
figure of Satan with his legs bound. The cincture seemed 
to give him a sense of security. 

In several ways he made it impossible for me to avoid 
disregarding Clause 3 in the little guide-books ; but I feel 
quite sure that he has not in consequence lost his situation. 

Delft's greatest painter was Johannes Vermeer, known 
as Vermeer of Delft, of whom I shall have much to say both 
at the Hague and Am.sterdam. He was born at Delft in 
1632, he died there in 1675 ; and of him but little more 
is known. It has been said that he studied under Karel 
Fabritius (also of Delft), but if this is so the term of pupil- 
age must have been very brief, for Fabritius did not reach 
Delft (from Rembrandt's studio) until 1652, when Vermeer 
was twenty, and he was killed in an explosion in 1654. 
One sees the influence of Fabritius, if at all, most strongly 
in the beautiful early picture at The Hague, in the grave, 
grand manner, of Diana, but the influence of Italy is even 



VERMEER OF DELFT 59 

more noticeable. Fabritius's " Siskin " is hung beneath the 
new Girl's Head by Vermeer (opposite page 2 of this book), 
but they have nothing in common. To see how Vermeer de- 
rived from Rembrandt via Fabritius one must look at the 
fine head by Fabritius in the Boymans Museum at Rotter- 
dam, so long attributed to Rembrandt, but possessing a 
certain radiance foreign to him. 

How many pictures Vermeer painted between 1653, when 
he was admitted to the Delft Guild as a master, and 1675, 
when he died, cannot now be said ; but it is reasonable to 
allot to each of those twenty-three years at least five works. 
As the known pictures of Vermeer are very few — fewer than 
forty, I believe — some great discoveries may be in store for 
the diligent, or, more probably, the lucky. 

I have read somewhere — but cannot find the reference 
again — of a ship that left Holland for Russia in the 
seventeenth century, canying a number of paintings by the 
best artists of that day — particularly, if I remember, 
Gerard Dou. The vessel foundered and all were lost. It 
is possible that Vermeer may have been largely represented. 

Only comparatively lately has fame come to him, his 
first prophet being the French critic Thore (who wrote as 
" W. Burger "), and his second Mr. Henri Havard, the 
author of very pleasant books on Holland from which I 
shall occasionally quote. Both these enthusiasts wrote 
before the picture opposite page 2 was exhibited, or their 
ecstasies might have been even more intense. 

In the Senate House at Delft in 1641 John Evelyn the 
diarist saw " a mighty vessel of wood, not unlike a butter- 
churn, which the adventurous woman that hath two hus- 
bands at one time is to wear on her shoulders, her head 
peeping out at the top only, and so led about the town, 
as a penance ". I did not see this ; but the punishment 



60 SIGN-BOARDS 

was not peculiar to Delft. At Nymwegen these wooden 
petticoats were famous too. 

Nor did I visit the porcelain factory, having very little 
interest in its modern products. But the old Delft ware 
no one can admire more than I do. A history of Delft 
written by Dirk van Bleyswijck and published in 1667, 
tells us that the rise of the porcelain industry followed the 
decline of brewing. The author gives with tears a list of 
scores of breweries that ceased to exist between 1600 and 
1640. All had signs, among them being : — 



The Popinjay. 
The Great Bell. 
The White Lily. 
The Three Herrings. 
The Double Battle-axe. 



The Three Acorns. 
The Black Unicorn. 
The Three Lihes. 
The Curry-Comb. 
The Three Hammers. 



The Double Halberd. 

I would rather have explored any of those breweries than 
the modern Delft factory. 

Ireland, by the way, mentions a whimsical sign-board 
which he saw somewhere in Holland, but which I regret 
to say I did not find. " It was a tree bearing fruit, and the 
branches filled with little, naked urchins, seemingly just 
ripened into life, and crying for succour : beneath, a woman 
holds up her apron, looking wistfully at the children, as if 
in treating them to jump into her lap. On inquiry, I found 
it to be the house of a sworn midwife, with this Dutch 
inscription prefixed to her name : — 

'Vang my, ik Zal Zoot Zyn,' 

that is, ' Catch me, I'll be a sweet boy \ This new mode f 
of procreation, so truly whimsical, pleased me," Ireland adds, :, 
"not a little." 

Let me close this chapter by quoting from an essay by my 



THE BELLS OF DELFT 61 

friend, Mr. Belloc, a lyrical description of the Old Church's 
wonderful wealth of bells : " Thirdly, the very structure of 
the thing is bells. Here the bells are more even than the 
soul of a Christian spire ; they are its body, too, its whole 
self. An army of them fills up all the space between the 
delicate supports and framework of the upper parts. For 
I know not how many feet, in order, diminishing in actual 
size and in the perspective also of that triumphant elevation, 
stand ranks on ranks of bells from the solemn to the wild, 
from the large to the small, a hundred, or two hundred or 
a thousand. There is here the prodigality of Brabant and 
Hainaut and the Batavian blood, a generosity and a pro- 
ductivity in bells without stint, the man who designed it 
saying : ' Since we are to have bells, let us have bells ; not 
measured out, calculated, expensive, and prudent bells, 
but careless bells, self-answering multitudinous bells ; bells 
without fear, bells excessive and bells innumerable ; bells 
worthy of the ecstacies that are best thrown out and 
published in the clashing of bells. For bells are single, 
like real pleasures, and we will combine such a great 
number that they may be like the happy and complex life 
of a man. In a word, let us be noble and scatter our bells 
and reap a harvest till our town is famous in its bells.' So 
now all the spire is more than clothed with them ; they 
are more than stuff or ornament : they are an outer and 
yet sensitive armour, all of bells. 

" Nor is the wealth of these bells in their number only, 

but also in their use — for they are not reserved in any way, 

but ring tunes and add harmonies at every half and a 

j quarter and at all the hours both by night and by day. 

I Nor must you imagine that there is any obsession of noise 

I through this ; they are far too high and melodious, and 

(what is more) too thoroughly a part of all the spirit of 



62 THE MUSIC OF THE SPIRE 

Delft to be more than a perpetual and half-forgotten im- 
pression of continual music ; they render its air sacred and 
fill it with something so akin to an uplifted silence as to 
leave one — when one has passed from their influence — ask- 
ing what balm that was which soothed all the harshness 
of sound about one." 



CHAPTER V 

THE HAGUE 

Dutch precision— Shaping hands— Nature under control— Willow v, 
Neptune— The lost star— S'Gravenhage— The Mauritshuis— Rem- 
brandt— The "School of Anatomy "—Jan Vermeer of Delft— The 
frontispiece— Other pictures— The Municipal Museum— Baron Steen- 
gracht's collection— The Mesdag treasures— French romantics at 
The Hague— The Binnenhof— John van Olden Barneveldt— Man's 
cruelty to man— The churches— The fish market and first taste of 
Scheveningen— A crowded street— Holland's reading— The Bosch— 

The club — The House in the Wood — Mr. " Secretary " Prior Old 

marvels— Howell the receptive and Coryate the credulous. 

A LTHOUGH often akin to the English, the Dutch 
i~x. character differs from it very noticeably in the 
matter of precision. The Englishman has little precision ; 
the Dutchman has too much. He bends everything to it. 
He has at its dictates divided his whole country into 
parellelograms. Even the rushes in his swamps are 
governed by the same law. The carelessness of nature is 
offensive to him ; he moulds and trains on every hand, as 
one may see on the railway j ourney to The Hague. Trees 
he endures only so long as they are obedient and equidist- 
ant : he Hkes them in avenues or straight lines; if they 
grow otherwise they must be pollarded. It is true that 
he has not touched the Bosch, at The Hague ; but since 
his hands perforce have been kept off its trees, he has run 
scores of formal straight well-gravelled paths beneath their 
branches. 

(68) 



64 THE DUTCHMAN'S RESTRAINING HAND 

This passion for interference grew perhaps from exulta- 
tion upon successful dealings with the sea. A man who 
by his own efforts can live in security below sea-level, and 
graze cattle luxuriantly where sand and pebbles and salt 
once made a desert, has perhaps the right to feel that 
everything in nature would be the better for a little manipu- 
lation. Eyes accustomed to the careless profusion that one 
may see even on a short railway journey in England are 
shocked to find nature so tractable both in land and water. 

The Dutchman's pruning, however, is not done solely 
for the satisfaction of exerting control. These millions of 
pollarded willows which one sees from the line have a 
deeper significance than might ever be guessed at : it is 
they that are keeping out Holland's ancient enemy, the 
sea. In other words, a great part of the basis of the 
strength of the dykes is imparted by interwoven willow 
boughs, which are constantly being renewed under the 
vigilant eyes of the dyke inspectors. For the rest, the 
inveterate trimming of trees must be a comparatively 
modern custom, for many of the old landscapes depict 
careless foliage — Koninck's particularly. And look, for 
instance, at that wonderful picture — perhaps the finest 
landscape in Dutch art — Rembrandt's etching " The Three 
Trees". There is nothing in North Holland to-day as 
unstudied as that. I doubt if you could now find three 
trees of such individuality and courage. 

When I was first at The Hague, seven years ago, I 
stayed not, as on my last visit, at the Oude Doelen, which 
is the most comfortable hotel in Holland, but at a more 
retired hostelry. It was spacious and antiquated, with 
large empty rooms, and cool passages, and an air of decay 
over all. Servants one never saw, nor any waiter proper ; 
one's every need was carried out by a very small and very 



THE LOST STAR 65 

enthusiastic boy. " Is the hroom good, sare ? " he asked, 
as he flung open the door of the bedroom with a superb 
flourish. '' Is the sham good, sare ? " he asked as he laid 
a pot of preserve on the table. He was the landlady's son 
or grandson, and a better boy never lived, but his part, 
for all his spirit and good humour, was a tragic one. For 
the greatest misfortune that can come upon an hotel- 
keeper had crushed this house : Baedeker had excised their 
star! 

The landlady moved in the background, a disconsolate 
figure with a grievance. She waylaid us as we went out 
and as we came in. Was it not a good hotel ? Was not 
the management excellent ? Had we any complaints ? 
And yet — see — once she had a star and now it was gone. 
Could we not help to regain it ? Here was the secret of 
the grandson's splendid zeal. The little fellow was fight- 
ing to hitch the old hotel to a star once more, as Emerson 
had bidden. 

Alas, it was in vain ; for that was seven years ago, and 
I see that Baedeker still withholds the distinction. What 
a variety of misfortune this little world holds ! While 
some of us are indulging our right to be unhappy over a 
thousand trivial matters, such as illness and disillusion, 
there are inn-keepers on the Continent who are staggering 
and struggling under real blows. 

I wondered if it were better to have had a star and lost 
it, than never to have had a star at all. But I did not 
ask. The old lady's grief was too poignant, her mind too 
practical, for such questions. 

S'Gravenhaffe or Den Haajj, or The Hague as we call it 

being the seat of the court, is at once the most civilised 

and most expensive of the Dutch cities. But it is not 

conspicuously Dutch, and is interesting rather for its 

5 



66 THE VYVER 

pictures and for its score of historic buildings about the 
Vyver than for itself Take away the Vyver and its sur- 
rounding treasures and a not very noteworthy European 
town would remain. 

And yet to say so hardly does justice to this city, for 
it has a character of its own that renders it unique : 
cosmopolitan and elegant ; catholic in its tastes ; indulgent 
to strangers ; aristocratic ; well -spaced and well built ; 
above all things, bland. 

And the Vyver is a jewel set in its midst, beautiful by 
day and beautiful by night, with fascinating reflections in 
it at both times, and a special gift for the transmission of 
bells in a country where bells are really honoured. On 
its north side is the Vyverberg with pleasant trees and a 
row of spacious and perfectly self-composed white houses, 
one of which, at the corner, has in its windows the most 
exquisite long lace curtains in this country of exquisite 
long lace curtains. 

On the south side are the Binnenhof and the Maurits- 
huis — in the Mauritshuis being the finest works of the 
two greatest Dutch painters, Rembrandt of the Rhine 
and Vermeer of Delft. It is largely by these possessions 
that The Hague holds her place as a city of distinction. 

Rembrandt's " School of Anatomy " and Paul Potter's 
" Bull " are the two pictures by which every one knows the 
Mauritshuis collection ; and it is the bull which maintains 
the steadier and larger crowd. But it is not a work that 
interests me. My pictures in the Mauritshuis are above 
all the " School of Anatomy," Vermeer's " View of Delft," 
his head of a young girl, and the Jan Steens. We have 
magnificent Rembrandts in London ; but we have nothing 
quite on the same plane of interest or mastery as the 
"School of Anatomy ". Holland has not always retained 




o S I 

o 3 > 



"THE SCHOOL OF ANATOMY" 67 

her artists' best, but in the case of Rembrandt and 
Hals, Jan Steen and Vermeer, she has made no mistakes. 
Rembrandt's "School of Anatomy," his " Night Watch," 
and his portrait of Elizabeth Bas are all in Holland. I 
can remember no landscape in Holland in the manner of 
that in our National Gallery in which, in conformity with 
the taste of certain picture buyers, he dropped in an in- 
essential Tobias and Angel ; but for the finest examples 
of his distinction and power as a painter of men one must 
go to The Hague and Amsterdam. In the Mauritshuis 
are sixteen Rembrandts, including the portrait of himself 
in a steel casque, and (one of my favourites) the head of 
the demure nun-like and yet merry-hearted Dutch maiden 
reproduced opposite the next page, which it is impossible 
to forget and yet difficult, when not looking at it, to recall 
with any distinctness — as is so often the case with one's 
friends in real life. 

If any large number of visitors to Holland taken at 
random were asked to name the best of Rembrandt's 
pictures they would probably say the " Night Watch ". 
But I fancy that a finer quality went to the making of the 
" School of Anatomy ". I fancy that the " School of Ana- 
tomy" is the greatest work of art produced by northern 
Europe. 

To Jan Steen and his work we come later, in the chapter 
on Leyden, but of Vermeer, whom we saw at Delft, this is 
one place to speak. Of the " View of Delft " there is a 
reproduction opposite page 58, yet it can convey but 
little suggestion of its beauty. In the case of the picture 
opposite page 2 there is only a loss of colour : a great part 
of its beauty is retained ; but the " View of Delft " 
must be seen in the original before one can speak of it at 
all. Its appeal is more intimate than any other old Dutch 



68 OF THE FRONTISPIECE 

landscape that I know. I say old, because modern painters 
have a few scenes which soothe one hardly less — two or 
three of Matthew Maris's, and Mauve's again and again. 
But before Maris and Mauve came the Barbizon influence ; 
whereas Vermeer had no predecessors, he had to find his 
delicate path for himself. To explain the charm of the 
" View of Delft " is beyond my power ; but there it is. 
Before Rembrandt one stands awed, in the presence of an 
ancient giant ; before Veimeer one rejoices, as in the pre- 
sence of a friend and contemporary. 

The head of a young girl, from the same brush, which 
was left to the nation as recently as 1903, is reproduced 
opposite page 2. To me it is one of the most beautiful 
things in Holland. It is, however, in no sense Dutch : 
the gM is not Dutch, the painting is Dutch only be- 
cause it is the work of a Dutchman. No other Dutch 
painter could compass such liquid clarity, such cool sur- 
faces. Indeed, none of the others seem to have tried : 
a different ideal was theirs. Apart, however, from the 
question of technique, upon which I am not entitled to 
speak, the picture has to me human interest beyond de- 
scription. There is a winning charm in this simple Eastern 
face that no words of mine can express. All that is hard 
in the Dutch nature dissolves beneath her reluctant smile. 
She symbolises the fairest and sweetest things in the 
Eleven Provinces. She makes Holland sacred ground. 

Vermeer, although always a superb craftsman, was not 
always inspired. In the next room to the " View of Delft " 
and the girl's head is his " New Testament Allegory," a 
picture which I think I dislike more than any other, so 
false seems to me its sentiment and so unattractive its 
character. Yet the sheer painting of it is little short of 
mira,culous. 




A YOUNG WOMAN 

KE:iIBKANDT 
; the picture in the Majtritshuis 



BOSBOOM 69 

Among other Dutch pictures in the Mauritshuis which 
I should like to mention for their particular charm are 
Gerard Dou's "Young Housekeeper," to which we come 
in the chapter on Leyden's painters ; Ostade's " Proposal," 
one of the pleasantest pictures which he ever signed ; 
RuisdaeFs " View of Haarlem " and Terburg's portraits. 
I single these out. But when I think of the marvels of 
painting that remain, of which I have said not a word, I 
am only too conscious of the uselessness of such a list. 
Were this a guide-book I should say more, mentioning also 
the work of the other schools, not Dutch, notably a head of 
Jane Seymour by Holbein, a Velasquez, and so forth. But 
I must not. 

After the Mauritshuis, the Municipal Museum, which 
also overlooks the Vyver's placid surface, is a dull place 
except for the antiquary. In its old views of the city, 
which are among its most interesting possessions, the evo- 
lution of the neighbouring Doelen hotel may be studied by 
the curious — from its earliest days, when it was a shoot- 
ing gallery, to its present state of spaciousness and repute, 
basking in its prosperity and cherishing the proud know- 
ledge that Peter the Great has slept under its hospitable 
roof, and that it was there that the Russian delegate re- 
sided when, in 1900, the Czar convoked at The Hague the 
Peace Conference which he was the first to break. 

In one room of the Municipal Museum are the palette 
and easel of Johannes Bosboom, Holland's great painter 
of churches. His last unfinished sketch rests on the easel. 
No collection of modern Dutch art is complete without a 
sombre study of Gothic arches by this great artist. All his 
work is good, but I saw nothing better than the water- 
colour drawing in the Boymans Museum at Rotterdam, 
which is reproduced opposite page 132. 



70 THE MESDAG MUSEUM 

At The Hague one may also see, whenever the family is 
not in residence, the collection of Baron Steengracht in 
one of the ample white mansions on the Vyverberg. Most 
interesting of the pictures to me are Jan Steen's family 
gi'oup, which, however, for all its wonderful drawing, is 
not in his most interesting manner; a very deft Metsu, 
" The Sick Child " ; a horse by Albert Cuyp ; a character- 
istic group of convivial artists by Adrian Brouwer, includ- 
ing Hals, Ostade, Jan Steen and the painter himself; and 
— best of all — Terburg's wholly charming " Toilette," an 
old woman combing the head of a child. 

Quite recently the Mesdag Museum has been added to 
the public exhibitions of The Hague. This is the house of 
Hendriks Willem Mesdag, the artist, which, with all its 
Barbizon treasures, with noble generosity he has made 
over to the nation in his lifetime. Mesdag, who is himself 
one of the first of living Dutch painters, has been acquir- 
ing pictures for many years, and his collection, by repre- 
senting in every example the taste of a single connoisseur, 
has thus the additional interest of unity. Mesdag's own 
paintings are mostly of the sea — a grey sea with a few fish- 
ing boats, very true, very quiet and simple. How many 
times he and James Maris painted Scheveningen's shore 
probably no one could compute. His best-known work 
is probably the poster advertising the Harwich and Hook- 
of-Holland route, in which the two ports are joined by a 
chain crossing a grey sea — best known, because every one 
has seen this picture : it is at all the stations ; although 
few, I imagine, have connected with it the name and fame 
of the Dutch artist and patron of the arts. 

In the description of the Ryks collection at Amsterdam 
I shall say something about the pleasure of choosing one's 
own particular picture from a gallery. It was amusing to 



COROT AND DIAZ 71 

indulge the same humour in the Mesdag Museum : per- 
haps even more so than at the Ryks, for one is certain that 
by no means could Vermeer's Httle picture of "The Reader," 
— the woman in the bluejacket — for example, be abstracted 
from those well-guarded walls, whereas it is just conceiv- 
able that one could select from these crowded little Mesdag 
rooms something that might not be missed. I hesitated 
long between a delicate Matthew Maris, the very essence 
of quietude, in which a girl stands by a stove, cooking ; 
Delacroix's wonderful study of dead horses in the desert ; 
a perfect Diaz (No. 114), an old woman in a red shawl by 
a pool in a wood, with its miracle of lighting ; a tender 
little Daumier, that rare master ; a Segantini drenched in 
sincerity and pity; and a bridge at evening (No. 127) by 
Jules Dupre. All these are small and could be slipped 
under the overcoat with the greatest ease ! 

Having made up my mind I returned to each and 
lost all my decision. I decided again, and again un- 
certainty conquered. And then I made a final examina- 
tion, and chose No. 64 — a totally new choice — a little 
lovely Corot, depicting a stream, two women, much 
essential greenness, and that liquid light of which Corot 
had the secret. 

But I am not sure that the Diaz (who began by being 
an old master) is not the more exquisite picture. 

For the rest, there are other Corots, among them one 
of his black night pieces ; a little village scene by Troyon ; 
some apples by Courbet, in the grandest manner surely in 
which apples ever were painted ; a Monticelli ; a scene of 
hills by Georges Michel which makes one wish he had 
painted the Sussex Downs ; a beautiful chalk drawing by 
Millet ; some vast silent Daubignys ; a few Mauves ; a 
very interesting early James Maris in the manner of Peter 



n THE BINNENHOF 

de Hooch, and a superb later James Maris — wet sand 
and a windy sky. 

The flower of the French romantic school is represented 
here, brought together by a collector with a sure eye. No 
visitor to The Hague who cares anything for painting should 
miss it ; and indeed no visitor who cares nothing for painting 
should miss it, for it may lure him to wiser ways. 

The Binnenhof is a mass of medieval and later buildings 
extending along the south side of the Vyver, which was 
indeed once a part of its moat. The most attractive view 
of it is from the north side of the Vyver, with the long 
broken line of roof and gable and turret reflected in the 
water. The nucleus of the Binnenhof was the castle or 
palace of William H., Count of Holland in the thirteenth 
century — also Emperor of Germany and father of Florence 
v., who built the great hall of the knights (into which, 
however, one may penetrate only on Thursdays), and whose 
tomb we shall see in Alkmaar church. The Stadtholders 
made the Binnenhof their headquarters ; but the present 
Royal Palace is half a mile north-west of it. Other build- 
ings have been added from time to time, and the trams are 
now allowed to rush through with their bells j angling the 
while. The desecration is not so glaring as at Utrecht, but 
it seems thoroughly wrong — as though we were to permit 
a line to traverse Dean's Yard at Westminster. A more 
appropriate sanction is that extended to one or two 
dealers in old books and prints who have their stalls in 
the Binnenhof s cloisters. 

It was in the Binnenhof that the scaffold stood on which 
John van Barne veldt was beheaded in 161 9, the almost inevit- 
able result of his long period of differences with the Stadt- 
holder Maurice, son of William the Silent. His arrest, as 
we have seen, followed the Synod of Dort, Grotius being also 



BARNEVELDT'S END 73 

removed by force. Barn e veldt's imprisonment, trial and 
execution resemble Spanish methods of injustice more 
closely than one likes to think. I quote Davies' fine ac- 
count of the old statesman's last moments : *' Leaning on 
his staff, and with his servant on the other side to support 
his steps, grown feeble with age, Barneveldt walked com- 
posedly to the place of execution, prepared before the great 
saloon of the court-house. If, as it is not improbable, at 
the approach of death in the midst of life and health, when 
the intellect is in full vigour, and every nerve, sense and 
fibre is strung to the highest pitch of tension, a foretaste 
of that which is to come is sometimes given to man, and 
his over-wrought mind is enabled to grasp at one single 
effort the events of his whole past life — if, at this moment 
and on this spot, where Barneveldt was now to suffer a 
felon's death, — where he had first held out his fostering 
hand to the infant republic, and infused into it strength 
and vigour to conquer the giant of Europe, — where he had 
been humbly sued for peace by the oppressor of his country, 
— where the ambassadors of the most powerful sovereigns 
had vied with each other in soliciting his favour and sup- 
port, — where the wise, the eloquent, and the learned, had 
bowed in deference to his master-spirit ; — if, at this moment, 
the memory of all his long and glorious career on earth 
flashed upon his mind in fearful contrast to the present 
reality, with how deep feeling must he have uttered the 
exclamation as he ascended the scaffold, ' Oh God ! what 
then is man ? ' 

" Here he was compelled to suffer the last petty indignity 
that man could heap upon him. Aged and infirm as he 
was, neither stool nor cushion had been provided to 
mitigate the sense of bodily weakness as he performed the 
last duties of mortal life ; and kneeling down on the bare 



74 A NOBLE WIDOW 

boards, he was supported bj his servant, while the minister, 
John Lamotius, dehvered a prayer. When prepared for 
the block, he turned to the spectators and said, with a 
loud and firm voice, ' ]\ly friends, believe not that I am a 
traitor. I have lived a good patriot, and such I die '. He 
then, with his own hands, drew his cap over his eyes, and 
bidding the executioner 'be quick,' bowed his venerable 
head to the stroke. 

"The populace, from various fieelings, some inspu*ed by 
hatred, some by affection, dipped their handkerchiefs in his 
blood, or carried away morsels of the blood-stained wood 
and sand ; a few were even found to sell these as relics. The 
body and head were laid in a coffin and buried decently, 
but with little ceremony, at the com't church of the Hague. 

"The States of Holland rendered to his memory that 
justice which he had been denied while living, by the words 
in which they recorded his death. After stating the time 
and manner of it, and his long period of service to his 
country, the resolution concludes, ' a man of great activity, 
diligence, memory, and conduct ; yea, remarkable in every 
respect. Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest 
he fall ; and may God be merciful to his soul.' " 

A very beautiful story is told of Barneveldt's widow. 
Her son plotting to avenge his father and crush the 
Stadtholder was discovered and imprisoned. His mother 
visited Maurice to ask his pardon. " Why," said he, " how 
is this — you value your son more than your husband ! You 
did not ask pardon for him." "No," said Barneveldt's 
widow ; " I did not ask pardon for my husband, because 
he was innocent ; I ask pardon for my son, because he is 
guilty." 

Prince Maurice never recovered from the error — to put 
for the moment no worse epithet to it — of the death of 



MORE ILLUSTRIOUS BLOOD 75 

Bameveldt. He had killed his best counsellor ; thence- 
forward his power diminished ; and with every rebuff he who 
had abandoned his first adviser complained that God had 
abandoned him. Davies sums up the case thus: "The 
escutcheon of Maurice is bright with the record of many 
a deed of glory; the fabric of his country's greatness 
raised by his father, strengthened and beautified by him- 
self; her armies created the masters of military science to 
the civilized world ; her States the centre and mainspring of 
its negotiations ; her proud foe reduced to sue humbly at her 
feet. But there is one dark, deep stain on which the eye 
of posterity, unheeding the surrounding radiance, is con- 
stantly fixed : it is the blood of Barneveldt." 

The Binnenhof leads to the Buitenhof, a large open 
space, the old gateway to which is the Gevangenpoort 
prison — scene of another shameful deed in the history of 
Holland, the death of John and Cornelius de Witt. The 
massacre occurred two hundred and thirty-three years ago 
— in 1672. Cornelius de Witt was wrongfully accused of 
an attempt to procure the assassination of the Stadtholder, 
William III. To him, in his cell in the Gevangenpoort, 
came, on 22nd August, John de Witt, late Grand Pension- 
ary, brought hither by a bogus message. 

I quote from Davies, who elsewhere makes it clear that 
(as Dumas says) William III. was privy to the crime : " His 
friends, fearful of some treachery, besought him to pause 
and inquire into the truth of the summons before he obeyed 
it; and his only daughter threw herself at his feet, and 
implored him with floods of tears not to risk unnecessarily 
a life so precious. But his anxiety for his brother, with 
whom he had ever lived on terms of the tenderest affection, 
proved stronger than their remonstrances ; and setting out 
on foot, attended by his servant and two secretaries, he 



76 THE ASSASSINATION 

hastened to the prison. On seeing him, Cornelius de Witt 
exclaimed in astonishment, ' My brother, what do you 
here ? ' ' Did you not then send for me ? ' he asked ; and 
receiving an answer in the negative, 'Then,' rejoined he, 
' we are lost '. 

"During this time one of the judges sent for Tichelaar, 
and suggested to him that he should incite the people not 
to suffer a villain who had intended to murder the Prince 
to go unpunished. True to his instructions, the miscreant 
spread among the crowd collected before the prison doors 
the report, that the torture inflicted on Cornelius de Witt 
was a mere pretence, and that he had only escaped the 
death he deserved because the judges favoured his crime. 
Then, entering the gaol, he presented himself at the 
window, and exclaimed to the crowd below, ' The dog and 
his brother are going out of prison ! Now is your time ; 
revenge yourselves on these two knaves, and then on thirty 
more, their accomplices.' 

" The populace received his address with shouts and cries 
of ' To arms, to arms ! Treason, treason ! ' and pressed in 
a still denser crowd towards the prison door. The States 
of Holland, immediately on information of the tumult, 
sent three troops of cavalry, in garrison at the Hague, for 
the protection of the gaol, and called out to arms six 
companies of burgher guards. But in the latter they only 
added fresh hosts to the enemies of the unfortunate captives. 
One company in especial, called the 'Company of the Blue 
Flag,' was animated with a spirit of deadly vengeance against 
them ; its leader, Verhoef, having that morning loaded his 
musket with a determination either to kill the De Witts 
or perish in the attempt. They pressed forward towards 
the prison, but were driven back by the determined appear- 
ance of the cavalry, commanded by the Count de Tilly. 



OF THE DE WITTS 77 

" So long as these troops remained, it was evident that 
the fell purpose of the rioters was impracticable. Accord- 
ingly, a report was raised that a band of peasants and 
sailors was coming to plunder The Hague; and two 
captains of the burgher guards took occasion from thence 
to demand of the Council of State, that the soldiers should 
be drawn off from their station, in order to protect the 
houses from pillage. First a verbal order, and on Tilly's 
refusing obedience to such, a written one, was sent, com- 
manding him to divide his troops into four detachments, 
and post them upon the bridges leading into the town. 
' I shall obey,' said he, as he perused the mandate ; ' but 
it is the death-warrant of the brothers.' 

"His anticipations were too soon realized. No sooner 
had he departed than the rioters were supplied by some 
of those mysterious agents who were actively employed 
throughout the whole of these transactions, with wine, 
brandy, and other incitements to inflame their already 
maddening fury. Led on by Verhoef and one Van Bank- 
hem, a sheriff of The Hague, they assailed the prison 
door with axes aoid sledge-hammers, threatening to kill all 
the inmates if it were not instantly opened. Terrified, or 
corrupted, the gaoler obeyed their behests. On gaining 
admittance they rushed to an upper room, where they found 
their victims, who had throughout the whole of the tumult 
maintained the greatest composure. The baihfF, reduced 
to a state of extreme debility by the torture, was reclining 
on his bed ; his brother was seated near him, readinc^ the 
Bible. They forced them to rise and follow them ' to the 
place,' as they said, ' where criminals were executed '. 

" Having taken a tender leave of each other, they began 
to descend the stairs, Cornelius de Witt leaning on his 
brother for support. They had not advanced above two 



78 THE GEVANGENPOORT 

or three paces when a heavy blow on the head from be- 
hind precipitated the former to the bottom. He was then 
dragged a short distance towards the street, trampled 
under foot, and beaten to death. Meanwhile, John de 
Witt, after receiving a severe wound on the head with the 
butt-end of a musket, was brought by Verhoef, bleeding 
and bare-headed, before the furious multitude. One Van 
Soenen immediately thrust a pike into his face, while an- 
other of the miscreants shot him in the neck, exclaiming 
as he fell, ' There goes down the Perpetual Edict '. Raising 
himself on his knees, the sufferer lifted up his hands and 
eyes to heaven in deep and earnest prayer. At that moment, 
one Verhagen struck him with his musket. Hundi*eds 
followed his example, and the cruel massacre was completed. 

" Barbarities too dreadful for utterance or contemplation, 
all that phrenzied passion or brutal ferocity could suggest, 
were perpetrated on the bodies of these noble and vii'tuous 
citizens ; nor was it till night put an end to the butchery, 
that their friends were permitted to convey their mangled 
remains to a secret and obscure tomb." 

In the Nieuwe Kerk at The Hague the tomb of the De 
Witts may be seen and honoured. 

The Gevangenpoort is well worth a visit. One passes 
tortuously fi'om cell to cell — most of them associated with 
some famous breaker of the laws of God or man, principally 
of man. Here you may see a stone hollowed by the drops 
of water that plashed from the prisoner's head, on which 
they were timed to fall at intervals of a few seconds — a form 
of torture imported, I believe, from China, and after some 
hours ending inevitably in madness and death. Beside 
such a refinement the rack is a mere trifle and the Gevangen- 
poort's brandincr irons and thumb screws become only toys. 
A block, retaining the cuts made by the axe after it had 



CROWDS OF AN EVENING 79 

crashed through the offending neck, is also shown ; and the 
names of prisoners written in their blood on the walls may 
be traced. The building is a monument in stone of what 
man can do to man in the name of justice. 

I referred just now to the Nieuwe Kerk, the resting- 
place of the De Witts. There lies also their contem- 
porary, Spinoza, whose home at Rynsburg we shall pass 
on our way to Katwyk from Leyden. His house at The 
Hague still stands — near his statue. The Groote Kerk 
is older; but neither church is particularly interesting. 
From the Groote Kerk's tower one may, however, see a vast 
deal of country around The Hague — a landscape contain- 
ing much greenery — and in the west the architectural 
monsters of Scheveningen only too visible. We shall 
reach Scheveningen in the next chapter, but while at The 
Hague it is amusing to visit the fish market in order to 
have sight of the good women of that town clustered about 
the stalls in their peculiar costume. They are Scheven- 
ingen's best. The adjoining stadhuis is a very interesting- 
example of Dutch architecture. 

The Hague has excellent shops, and one street — the 
Lange Pooten — more crowded in the evening, particularly 
on Sunday evening, than any I know. Every Dutch town 
has certain crowded streets in the evening, because to walk 
up and down after dinner is the national form of recrea- 
tion. There are in the large cities a few theatres and 
music halls, and in the smaller, concerts in the summer ; 
but for the most part the streets and the cafes are the 
great attraction. Each town has one street above all 
others which is frequented in this way. At The Hague 
it is the Lange Pooten, running into Spui Straat ; at 
Amsterdam it is Kalverstraat. 

Dutch shops are not very interesting, and the book-shops 



80 ENGLISH BOOKS IN DUTCH 

in particular are a disappointment. This is because it is 
not a reading people. The newspapers are sound and 
practical before all things : business before pleasure is their 
motto ; and native literature is not fostered. Publishers 
who bring out new Dutch books usually do so on the old 
subscription plan. But the book-shops testify to the popu- 
larity of translations from other nations and also of foreign 
books in the original. The latest French and German 
fiction is always obtainable. Among translations from the 
English in 1904 I noticed a considerable number of copies 
of the Sherlock Holmes tales and also of two or three 
of Miss Corelli's works. These for adults ; for boys the 
reading par excellence was a serial romance, in weekly or 
monthly parts, entitled " De Wilsons en de Ring des Doods 
of het Spoor van pen Diamenten ". The Wilsons, I gather, 
have been having a great run in Holland. A lurid scene 
in Maiden Lane was on the cover. Another story which 
seemed to be popular had the engaging title " Beleaguered 
by Jaguars ". 

The Hague is very proud of the Bosch — the great wood 
to the east of the city, with a few deer and many tall and 
unpollarded trees, where one may walk and ride or drive 
very pleasantly. 

The Bosch has no restaurant within its boundai-ies. I 
mention this in order to save the reader the mortification 
of being conducted by a polite but firm waiter back to the 
gates of the pavilion in which he may reasonably have 
supposed he was as much entitled to order tea as any of 
the groups enjoying that beverage at the little tables 
within the enclosure, whose happiness had indeed led him 
to enter it. They are, however, members of a club, to which 
he has no more right of entry than any Dutch stranger 
would have to the Athenaeum. 




THE Mii.NAGERlE 

JAN STEEN 
From the picture in, the Maiiritshicis 



THE HOUSE IN THE WOOD 81 

The Huis ten Bosch, or House in the Wood, which all 
good travellers must explore, is at the extreme eastern end 
of the Bosch, with pleasure gi'ounds of its own, including 
a lake where royal skating parties are held. This very 
charming royal residence, now only occasionally occupied, 
is well worth seeing for its Chinese and Japanese decorations 
alone — apart from historical associations and mural paint- 
ings. For mural paintings unless they are very quiet I 
must confess to caring nothing, nor does a bed on which a 
temporal prince breathed his last, or his first, move me to 
any degree of interest ; but on the walls of one room of the 
House in the Wood is some of the most charming Chinese 
embroidery I ever saw, while another is decorated in blue 
and white of exquisite delicacy. With these gracious 
schemes of upholstery I shall always associate the Huis ten 
Bosch. 

At Leyden we shall find traces of Oliver Goldsmith : 
here at The Hague one may think of Mat. Prior, who 
was secretary to our Ambassador for some years and even 
wrote a copy of sprite !y verses on the subject. 

THE SECRETARY. 

Written at The Hague, i6g5. 

With labour assiduous due pleasure I mix, 
And in one day atone for the bus'ness of six. 
In a little Dutch chaise, on a Saturday night, 
On my left hand my Horace, a nymph on my right : 
No memoirs to compose, and no post-boy to move, 
That on Sunday may hinder the softness of love ; 
For her, neither visits, nor parties at tea, 
Nor the long-winded cant of a dull refugee : 
This night and the next shall be hers, shall be mine 
To good or ill-fortune the third we resign. 
Thus scorning the world, and superior to Fate, 
I drive in my car in professional state ; 
So with Phia thro' Athens Pisistratus rode, 
6 



82 PRIOR AND HOWELL 

Men thought her Minerva, and him a new god. 

But why should I stories of Athens rehearse, 

Where people knew love, and were partial to verse, 

Since none can with justice my pleasures oppose 

In Holland half-drowned in int'rest and prose ? 

By Greece and past ages what need I be tried 

When The Hague and the present are both on my side ? 

And is it enough for the joys of the day 

To think what Anacreon or Sappho would say. 

When good Vandergoes and his provident Vrow, 

As they gaze on my triumph, do freely allow, 

That, search all the province, you'll find no man dar is 

So blest as the Englishen Heer Secretar is ? 

Let me close this rambling account of The Hague with 
a passage from James Howell, in one of his conspicuously 
elaborate Familiar Letters, written in 1622, describing 
some of the odd things to be seen at that day in or about 
the Dutch city : " We went afterwards to the Hague, 
where there are hard by, though in several places, two 
wonderful things to be seen, the one of Art, the other of 
Nature ; that of Art is a Waggon or Ship, or a monster 
mixt of both like the Hippocentaure who was half man and 
half horse ; this Engin hath wheels and sails that will hold 
above twenty people, and goes with the wind, being drawn 
or mov'd by nothing else, and will run, the wind being good, 
and the sails hois'd up, above fifteen miles an hour upon 
the even hard sands : they say this Invention was found out 
to entertain Spinola when he came thither to treat of 
the last Truce." Upon this wonder, which I did not see, 
civilisation has now improved, the wind being but a captious 
and untrustworthy servant compared with petrol or steam. 
None the less there is still a very rapid wheeled ship at 
Zandvoort. 

But the record of Howell's other wonder is visible still. 
He continues; "That wonder of Nature is a Church- 



THREE HUNDRED AND SIXTY-FIVE! 8S 

monument, where an Earl and a Lady are engraven with 
S65 children about them, which were all - delivered at one 
birth ; they were half male, half female ; the two Basons in 
which they were Christened hang still in the Church, and 
the Bishop's Name who did it; and the story of this 
Miracle, with the year and the day of the month mentioned, 
which is not yet 200 years ago ; and the story is this : 
That the Countess walking about her door after dinner, 
there came a Begger-woman with two Children upon 
her back to beg alms, the Countess asking whether those 
children were her own, she answer'd, she had them both 
at one bu'th, and by one Father, who was her husband. 
The Countess would not only not give her any alms, but 
reviled her bitterly, saying, it was impossible for one man 
to get two children at once. The Begger-woman being 
thus provok'd with ill words, and without alms, fell to 
imprecations, that it should please God to show His judg- 
ment upon her, and that she might bear at one birth as 
many children as there be days in the year, which she did 
before the same year's end, having never born child before." 
The legend was naturally popular in a land of large 
families, and it was certainly credited without any reserva- 
tion for many years. In England the rabbit-breeding 
woman of Dorking had her adherents too. What the 
beggar really wished for the Dutch lady was as many 
children at one birth as there were days in the year in 
which the conversation occuiTed — namely three, for the 
encounter was on January 3rd. Or so I have somewhere 
read. But it is more amusing to believe in the greater 
number, especially as a Dutch author has put it on record 
that he saw the children with his own eyes. They were 
of the size of shrimps, and were baptised either singly or 
collectively by Guy, Bishop of Utrecht. All the boys were 



84 CORYATE THE CREDULOUS 

named John and all the girh Elizabeth. They died the 
same day. 

Thomas Coryate of the Crudities, who also tells the tale, 
believed it implicitly. "This strange history," he says, 
"will seem incredible (I suppose) to all readers. But it 
is so absolutely and undoubtedly true as nothing in the 
world more." 

And here, hand in hand with Veritas, we leave The 
Hague. 



CHAPTER VI 

SCHEVENINGEN AND KATWYK 

The Dutch heaven — Huyghens' road — Sorgh Vliet's builder — Jacob Cats 
— Homely wisdom— President Kruger — A monstrous resort — Giant 
snails — The black-headed mannikins — The etiquette of petticoats 
— Katwyk — The old Rhine — Noordwyk — Noordwyk-Binnen. 

GOOD Dutchmen when they die go to Scheveningen ; 
but my heaven is elsewhere. To go thither is, 
however, no calamity, so long as one chooses the old road. 
It is being there that so lowers the spirits. The Oude 
Scheveningen Weg is perhaps the pleasantest, and certainly 
the shadiest, road in Holland : not one avenue but many, 
straight as a line in Euclid. On either side is a spreading 
wood, among the trees of which, on the left hand, as 
one leaves The Hague, is Sorgh Vliet, once the retreat of 
old Jacob Cats, lately one of the residences of a royal 
Duke, and now sold to a building company. The road 
dates from 1666, its projector being Constantin Huyghens, 
poet and statesman, whose statue may be seen at the half- 
way halting-place. By the time this is reached the charm 
of the road is nearly over : thenceforward it is all villas and 
Scheveningen. 

But we must pause for a little while at Sorgh Vliet 
(which has the same meaning as Sans Souci\ where two 
hundred years ago lived in genial retirement the writer 
who best represents the shrewd sagacity of the Dutch 

(85) 



86 IDEAL ILLUSTRATIONS 

character — Jacob Cats, or Vader Cats as he was aiFection- 
atelv called, the author of the Dutch " Household Bible," 
a huge miscellaneous collection of wise saws and modern 
instances, humoui' and satu'e, upon all the businesses of life. 

Mr. Austin Dobson, who leaves gi-ains of gold on all 
he touches, has described in his Side-Walk Studies the 
huge illustrated edition of Cats' Works (Amsterdam, 1655) 
which is held sacred in all rightly constituted old-fashioned 
Dutch households. I have seen it at the British Museum, 
and it seems to me to be one of the best picture-books in 
the world. 

As Mr. Dobson says, the life of old Holland is repro- 
duced in it. " What would one not give for such an illus- 
trated copy of Shakespeare ! In these pages of Jacob Cats 
we have the authentic Holland of the seventeenth century : 
— its vanes and spires and steep-roofed houses ; its gardens 
with their geometric tulip-beds, their formally-clipped 
alleys and arches, then- shining parallelograms of water. 
Here are its old-fashioned interiors, with the deep fire- 
places and queer andirons, the huge four-posters, the prim 
portraits on the wall, the great brass-clamped coffers and 
carved armories for the ruffs and starched collars and stiff 
farthingales of the women. In one picture you may see 
the careful housewife mournfully inspecting a moth-eaten 
garment which she has j ust taken from a chest that Wardour 
Street might envy ; in another she is energetically cuffing 
the 'foolish fat scullion,' who has let the spotted Dalmatian 
coach-doo; overturn the cauldi'on at the fire. Here an 
old crone, with her spectacles on, is cautiously probing the 
contents of the said cauldron with a fork ; here the mistress 
of the house is peeling pears ; here the plump and soft- 
hearted cheese-wife is entertainino^ an admirer — outside 
there are pictures as vivid. Here are the clumsy leather- 




PORTRAIT OF G. BICKER, LANDRICHTER Ot MUIDEN 

VAN DER HELST 
Fro}n the pictui-e iti the Jyy/;s Museiun 



HOMESPUN WISDOM 87 

topped coach with its masked occupant and stumbling 
horses ; the towed treJcschuit, with its meiTy fi'eight, sHding 
swiftly through the low-lying landscape ; the windy mole, 
stretching seaward, with its blown and flaring beacon-flre. 
Here again in the street is the toy-shop with its open front 
and store of mimic drums and halberds for the martial little 
burghers ; here are the fruiteress with her stall of grapes 
and melons, the rat-catcher with his string of trophies, the 
fowler and his clap-net, the furrier with his stock of skins." 
In 1860 a number of Van der Venue's best pictures were 
redrawn by John Leighton to accompany translations of 
the fables by Richard Pigot. As a taste of Cats' quality 
I quote two of the pieces. Why the pictures should have 
been redrawn when they might have been reproduced ex- 
actly is beyond my understanding. This is one poem : — 

LIKE MELONS, FRIENDS ARE TO BE FOUND IN PLENTY 
OF WHICH NOT EVEN ONE IS GOOD IN TWENTY. 

In choosing Friends, it's requisite to use 
The self-same care as when we Melons choose : 
No one in haste a Melon ever buys, 
Nor makes his choice till three or four he tries ; 
And oft indeed when purchasing this fruit. 
Before the buyer can find one to suit, 
He's e'en obliged t' examine half a score, 
And p'rhaps not find one when his search is o'er. 
Be cautious how you choose a firiend ; 

For Friendships that are lightly made, 
Have seldom any other end 

Than grief to see one's trust betray'd ! 

And here is another : — 

SMOKE IS THE FOOD OF LOVERS. 

When Cupid open'd Shop, the Trade he chose 
Was just the very one you might suppose. 
Love keep a shop ? — his trade. Oh ! quickly name ! 
A Dealer in tobacco — Fie for shame ! 



88 FATHER JACOB CATS 

No less than true, and set aside all joke, 
From oldest time he ever dealt in Smoke ; 
Than Smoke, no other thing he sold, or made ; 
Smoke all the substance of his stock in trade ; 
His Capital all Smoke, Smoke all his store, 
'Twas nothing else ; but Lovers ask no more — 
And thousands enter daily at his door ! 
Hence it was ever, and it e'er will be 
The trade most suited to his faculty ; — 
Fed by the vapours of their heart's desire, 
No other food his Votaries require ; 
For, that they seek — The Favour of the Fair, 
Is unsubstantial as the Smoke and air. 

From these rhymes, with then' home-spun philosophy, 
one might assume Cats to have been merely a witty peasant. 
But he was a man of the highest culture, a great jurist, 
twice ambassador to England, where Charles I. laid his 
sword on his shoulder and bade him rise Sir Jacob, a 
traveller and the friend of the best intellects. From an 
interesting article on Dutch poetry in an old Foreign 
Quarterly Review I take an account of the aphorist : 
" Vondel had -for his contemporary a man, of whose popu- 
larity we can hardly give an idea, unless we say that to 
speak Dutch and to have learnt Cats by heart, are almost 
the same thing. Old Father Jacob Cats — (we beg to 
apologize for his unhappy name — and know not why, like 
the rest of his countrymen, he did not euphonize it into 
some well-sounding epithet, taken from Greece or Rome — 
Elouros, for example, or Felisius ; Catsius was ventured 
upon by his contemporaries, but the honest grey-beard 
stuck to his paternities) — was a man of practical wisdom 
— great experience — much travel — considerable learning — 
and wonderful fluency. He had occupied high offices of 
state, and retired a patriarch amidst children and children's 
children, to that agreeable retreat which we mentioned as 
not far from The Hague, where we have often dreamed his 



AND HIS WORKS 89 

sober and serious — but withal cheerful and happy, spirit, 
might still preside. His moralities are sometimes prolix, 
and sometimes rather dull. He often sweeps the bloom 
away from the imaginative anticipations of youth — and in 
that does little service, He will have everything sub- 
stantial, useful, permanent. He has no other notion of 
love than that it is meant to make good husbands and 
wives, and to produce painstaking and obedient children. 
" His poetry is rhymed counsel — kind, wise, and good. 
He calculates all results, and has no mercy for thoughts, 
or feelings, or actions, which leave behind them weariness, 
regret or misery. His volumes are a storehouse of pru- 
dence and worldly wisdom. For every state of life he 
has fit lessons, so nicely dovetailed into rhyme, that the 
morality seems made expressly for the language, or the 
language for the morality. His thoughts — all running 
about among the duties of life — voluntarily move in har- 
monious numbers, as if to think and to rhyme were one 
solitary attribute. For the nurse who wants a song for 
her babe — the boy who is tormented by the dread of the 
birch — the youth whose beard begins to grow — the lover 
who desires a posey for his lady's ring — for the husband — 
father — grandsire — for all there is a store — to encourage — 
to console — and to be grateful for. The titles of his works 
are indices to their contents. Among them are De 
Ouderdom, Old Age ; Buyten Leven, Out-of-Doors Life ; 
Hofgedachten^ Garden Thoughts ; Gedacliten op Slapelooze 
Nachten^ Thoughts of Sleepless Nights ; Trouwring^ Mar- 
riage Ring ; Zelfsti^iit, Self-struggle, etc. Never was a 
poet so essentially the poet of the people. He is always 
intelligible — always sensible — and, as was well said of him 
by KruijifF, 

Smiling he teaches truth, and sporting wins to virtue." 



90 SCHEVENINGEN'S SANDS 

When President Kruger died last year the memoirs of 
him agreed in fixing upon the Bible as his only reading. 
But I am certain he knew Vader Cats by heart too. If 
ever a master had a faithful pupil, Vader Cats had one 
in Oom Paul. The vivid yet homely metaphors and 
allegories in which Oom Paul conveyed so many of his 
thoughts were drawn from the same source as the emblems 
of Vader Cats. Both had the JEsopian gift. 

We have no one English writer with whom to compare 
Cats ; but a syndicate formed of Fuller and Burton, Cobbett 
and Quarles might produce something akin. 

Scheveningen is half squalid town, half monstrous 
pleasure resort. Upon its sea ramparts are a series of 
gigantic buildings, greatest of which is the Curhaus, where 
the best music in Holland is to be heard. Its pier and 
its promenade are not at the first glimpse unlike Brighton's ; 
but the vast buildings have no counterpart with us, except 
perhaps at Blackpool. What is, however, peculiar to 
Scheveningen is its expanse of sand covered with sentry- 
box wicker chairs. To stand on the pier on a fine day in 
the season and look down on these thousands of chairs 
and people is to receive an impression of insect-like activity 
that I think cannot be equalled. Immovable as they are, the 
chairs seem to add to the restlessness of the seething mass. 
What a visitor from Mars would make of it is a mystery ; 
but he could hardly fail to connect chair and occupant. 
Here, he would say, is surely the abode of giant snails ! 

On a windy day the chairs must be of great use ; but in 
heat they seem to me too vertical and too hard. One 
must, however, either sit in them or lie upon sand. There 
is not a pebble on the whole coast: indeed there is not 
a pebble in Holland. Life after lying upon sand can 
become to some of us a burden almost too difficult to bear ; 



THE LITTLE BIRDS 91 

but the Dutch holiday-maker does not seem to find it so. 
As for the children, they are truly in Paradise. There 
can be no sand better to dig in than that of Scheveningen ; 
and they dig in it all day. A favourite game seems to be 
to surround the parental sentry-boxes with a fosse. Every 
family has its castle, and every castle its moat. 

I have been twice to Scheveningen, and on each occasion 
I acquired beneath its glittering magnitude a sense of 
depression. That leaven of tenderness which every col- 
lection of human beings must have was harder to find at 
Scheveningen than anywhere in Holland — everything was 
so ordered, so organised, for pleasure, pleasure at any price, 
pleasure almost at the point of the bayonet. 

But on the second occasion one little incident saved the 
day — an encounter with a strolling bird-fancier who dealt 
in Black-Headed Mannikins. Two of these tiny brisk 
birds, in their Quaker black and brown, sat upon his cane 
to attract purchasers. They fluttered to his finger, perched 
on his hat, simulated death in the palm of his hand, and 
went through other evolutions with the speed of thought 
and the bright spontaneous alacrity possible only to a 
small loyal bird. These, however, were not for sale : these 
were decoys ; the saleable birds lay, packed far too close, 
in little wooden boxes in the man's bag. And Scheveningen 
to me means no longer a mile of palaces, no longer a " hot 
huddle of humanity ' ' on the sand among myriad sentry- 
boxes : its symbol is just two Black-Headed Mannikins. 

From the Curhaus it is better to return to the Hague by 
electric tram along the new road. Save for passing a field 
where the fishwives of Scheveningen in their blue shawls 
spread and mend their nets, this road is dull and suburban ; 
but from it, when the light is failing, a view of Schevenin- 
gen's domes and spires may be gained which, softened and 



92 PETTICOATS AND SPINOZA 

made mysterious by the gloaming, translates the chief 
watering-place of Holland into an Eastern city of romance. 

The fishwives of Scheveningen, I am told, carry the art 
of petticoat wearing to a higher point than any of their 
sisters. The appearance of the homing fleet in the offing 
is a signal for as many as thirty of these garments to be 
put on as a mark of welcome to a returning husband. 

Probably no shore anywhere in the world has been so 
often painted as that of Scheveningen — ever since the 
painting of landscape seemed a worthy pursuit. James 
Maris' pictures of Scheveningen's wet sand, grey sea, and 
huge flat-bottomed ships must run into scores ; Mesdag's 
too. Perhaps it was the artists that prevailed on the fisher- 
men to wear crimson knickerbockers — the note of warm 
colour that the scene demands. 

Here, although it is separated from Scheveningen by 
some miles of sand, I should like to say something of 
Katwyk — which is Ley den's marme resort. A steam-tram 
carries people thither many times a day. The rail, when first 
I travelled upon it, in April, ran through tulips ; in August, 
when I was there again, the patches of scarlet and orange 
had given way to acres of massive purple-green cabbages 
which, in the evening light, were vastly more beautiful. 

At Rynsburg, one of the villages on the way, dwelt in 
1650-51 Benedict Spinoza, the philosopher, and there he 
wrote his abridgement of the Meditations of Descartes, his 
master in philosophy, who had for a while lived close by at 
Endegeest. Spinoza, who was born at Amsterdam in 1632, 
died in 1677. His house at Rynsburg, which he shared 
with a Colleginat (one of a sect of Remonstrants who had 
their headquarters there) is now a Spinoza museum ; his 
statue is at The Hague. 

Katwyk-an-Zee is a compact little pleasure resort with 



ep'-?i" ;£.m- 



"— ^ Maa a w wuBw ia Mi 



\S 





KATWYK AND NOORDWYK 93 

the usual fantastic childish villas. Its most interesting 
possession is the mouth of the Old Rhine, now restricted 
by a canal and controlled by locks. There is perhaps no 
better example of the Dutch power over water than the 
contrast between the present narrow canal through which 
the river must disembogue and the unprofitable marsh 
which once spread here. The locks, which are nearly a 
hundred \ears oJd, were among the works of the engineer 
Conrad, whose monument is in Haarlem church. 

From the Old Rhine's mouth to Noordwyk is a lonely 
but very bracing walk of three miles along the sand, with 
the dunes on one's right hand and the sea on one's left. 
One may meet perhaps a few shell gatherers, but no one 
else. We drove before us all the way a white company 
consisting of a score of gulls, twice as many tern, two 
oyster catchers and one curlew. They rose and settled, rose 
and settled, alwa3"s some thii'ty yards away, until Noordwyk 
was reached, when we left them behind. Never was a 
Japanese screen so realised as by these birds against the 
pearl grey sea and yellow sand. 

Katwyk is more cheery than Noordwyk ; but Noordwyk 
has a prettier street — indeed, in its old part there is no 
prettier street in Holland in the light of sunset. As 
Hastings is to Eastbourne, so is Katwyk to Noordwyk ; 
Scheveningen is Brighton, Yarmouth, and Blackpool in one. 
A very pretty lace cap is worn at Noordwyk by villagers 
and visitors alike, to hold the hair against the west wind. 

From Noordwyk we walked to Noordwyk-Binnen, the 
real town, parent of the seaside resort ; and there, at a 
table at the side of the main street, by an avenue so leafy 
as to exclude even glints of the sky, we sipped something- 
Dutch whose name I could not assimilate, and waited for 
the tram for Leyden. It was the greenest tunnel I ever saw. 



CHAPTER VII 

LEYDEN 

Steam-trams — Holland for the people — Quiet Leyden — The Meermans- 
burg — Leyden's museums — The call of the open — Oliver Goldsmith 
— A view of the Dutch — "Polite Learning" — "The Traveller" — 
James Howell — John Evelyn and the Burgundian Jew — Colloquia 
Peripatetica — St. Peter's and St. Pancras's — The Kermis — Drinking 
in Holland — Poffertjes and Wafelen — America's master. 

WE travelled to Leyden from The Hague by the 
steam-tram, through cheerful domestic surround- 
ings, past little Englishy cottages and gardens. It was 
Sunday morning, and the villagers of Voorburg and Voor- 
schoten and the other little places en route were idle and gay. 
In England light railways are a rarity ; Holland is 
covered with a net-work of them. The little trains rush 
along the roads all over the country, while the roadside 
willows rock in their eddying wake. To stand on the 
steam-tram footboard is one very good way to see Holland. 
In England of course we can never have such conveniences, 
England being a free country in which individual rights 
come first. But Holland exists for the State, and such an 
idea as the depreciation or ruin of property by running a 
tram line over it has never suggested itself. It is true that 
when the new eJectric tramway between Amsterdam and 
Haarlem was projected, the comic papers came to the 
defence of outraged Nature ; but they did not really mean 
it, as the aesthetic minority in England would have meant it. 

(94) 



THE DUTCH STUDENT 95 

The steam-tram journeys are always interesting; and 
my advice to a traveller in Holland is to make as much 
use of them as he can. This is quite simple as their time- 
tables are included in the official Reisgids. I like them at 
all times ; but best perhaps when one has to wait in the 
heart of some quiet village for the other tram to come up. 
There is something very soothing and attractive in these 
sudden cessations of noise and movement in the midst of a 
totally strange community. 

Leyden is a paradise of clean, quiet streets — a city of 
professors, students and soldiers. It has, I think, the 
prettiest red roofs in any considerable Dutch town: not- 
prettier than Veere's, but Veere is now only a village. Philo- 
sophers surely live here : book-worms to whom yesterday, 
to-day and to-morrow are one. The sense of commercial 
enterprise dies away: whatever they are at Amsterdam, 
the Dutch at Leyden cease to be a nation of shopkeepers. 

It was holiday time when I was there last, and the town 
was comparatively empty. No songs floated through the 
windows of the clubs. In talk with a stranger at one of the 
cafes, I learned that the Dutch student works harder in the 
holidays than in term. In term he is a social and imbibing 
creature ; but when the vacation comes and he returns to 
a home to which most of the allurements which an Eng- 
lish boy would value are wanting, he applies himself to his 
books. I give the statement as I heard it. 

One of the pleasantest buildings in Leyden is the Meer- 
mansbui'g — a spreading almshouse in the Oude Vest, sur- 
rounding a square garden with a massive pump in the 
midst. A few pictures are shown in the Governors' room 
over the entrance, but greater interest attaches to the little 
domiciles for the pensioners of the Meerman trust. A 
friendly concierge with a wooden leg showed us one of 



96 LEYDEN'S MUSEUMS 

these compact houses — a sitting-room with a bed -cupboard 
in one wall, and below it a little larder, like the cabin of a 
ship. At the back a tiny range, and above, a gaiTet One 
could be very comfortable in such quarters. 

Ley den has other hofjes, as these homes of rest are called, 
into one of which, gay with geraniums, I peeped — a little 
court of clean cottages seen through the doorway like a 
Peter de Hooch. 

I did not, I fear, do my duty by Leyden's many museums. 
The sun shone ; the boats swam continually down the Old 
Rhine and the New ; and the sea at Katwyk and Noordwyk 
sent a call across the intervening meadows. Some day 
perhaps I shall find myself at Leyden again, when the sky 
is grey and the thirst for information is more strongly 
upon me. Ethnography, comparative anatomy, physiology 
— there is nothing that may not be learned in the Leyden 
museums ; but such learning is not peculiarly Dutch, nor 
are the treasures of these museums peculiarly Dutch, and 
I felt that I mio;ht with a clear conscience leave them to 
others. Have we not Bloomsbury ? 

I did, however, climb the Burg, which is a circular fortress 
on a mound between the two rivers, so cleverly hidden away 
among houses that it was long ere I could find it. It is 
gained through an ancient courtyard full of horses and 
carriages — like a scene in Dumas. From the Burg one 
ought to have a fine view, but Leyden's roofs are too 
near. And in the Natural History Museum I walked 
through miles of birds stuffed, and birds articulated, until 
I felt that I could give a year's income to be on terms 
again with a living blackbird — even one of those that eat 
our Kentish strawberries at sunrise. 

I did not penetrate to the interior of the University, 
having none to guide me, but I was pleased to remember 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH 97 

that Oliver Goldsmith had been a student there not so 
very long ago. Indeed, as I walked about the town, I 
thought much of Goldsmith as he was in 1755, aged 
twenty-seven, with all his books to write, wandering 
through the same streets, looking upon the same houses 
and canals, in the interval of acquiring his mysterious 
medical degree (ultimately conferred at Louwain). His 
ingenious project, it will be remembered — by those whose 
memories (like my own) cling to that order of information, 
to the exclusion of everything useful and improving — 
Goldsmith's delightful plan for subsistence in Holland was 
to teach the English language to the Dutch, and in return 
receive enough money to keep him at the University of 
I^eyden and enable him to hear the great Professor Albinus. 
It was not until he reached Holland that those adorable 
Irish brains of his realised that he who teaches English to 
a Dutchman must first know Dutch. 

Goldsmith, who spent his life in doing characteristic 
things — few men have done more — when once he had 
determined to go to Holland, took a passage in a vessel 
bound for Bordeaux. At Newcastle-on-Tyne, however, 
on going ashore to be merry, he was arrested as a Jacobite 
and thrown into prison for a fortnight. The result was 
that the ship sailed without him. It was just as well 
for him and for us, for it sank at the mouth of the 
Garonne. In 1755, however, he was in Leyden, although 
by what route, circuitous or direct, he reached that city we 
do not know. 

He lost little time in giving his Uncle Contarine an 
account of his impressions of Holland and its people. Here 
is a portion of a long letter : " The modern Dutchman is 
quite a different creature from him of former times : he 
in everything imitates a Frenchman, but in his easy dis- 
7 



98 THE DUTCH AND THE SCOTCH 

engaged air, which is the result of keeping polite company. 
The Dutchman is vastly ceremonious, and is perhaps exactly 
what a Frenchman might have been in the reign of 
Louis XIV. Such are the better bred. But the downright 
Hollander is one of the oddest figures in nature : upon 
a head of lank hair he wears a half-cocked narrow hat 
laced with black ribbon ; no coat, but seven waistcoats, 
and nine pairs of breeches ; so that his hips reach almost 
up to his arm-pits. This well-clothed vegetable is now 
fit to see company^ or make love. But what a pleasing 
creature is the object of his appetite! Why she wears 
a large fur cap with a deal of Flanders lace : and for every 
pair of breeches he can-ies, she puts on two petticoats. 

"A Dutch lady burns nothing about her phleg natic 
admirer but his tobacco. You must know, sir, every 
women carries in her hand a stove with coals in it, which, 
when she sits, she snugs under her petticoats : and at this 
chimney dozing Strephon lights his yjipe. I take it that 
this continual smoking is what gives the man the ruddy 
healthful complexion he generally wears, by draining his 
superfluous moisture, while the woman, deprived of this 
amusement, overflows with such viscidities as tint the 
complexion, and give that paleness of visage which low 
fenny grounds and moist air conspire to cause. A Dutch 
woman and Scotch will bear an opposition. The one is 
pale and fat, the other lean and ruddy : the one walks as 
if she were straddling after a go-cart, and the other takes 
too masculine a stride. I shall not endeavour to deprive 
either country of its share of beauty; but must say, that 
of all objects on this ea.rth, an English farmer's daughter 
is most charming. Every woman there is a complete 
beautv, while the higher class of w^omen want many of the 
requisites to make them even tolerable. 




^^. '^b 





LEYDEN 



WINTER 99 

"' Their pleasures here are very dull though very various. 
You may smoke, you may doze, you may go to the Italian 
comedy, as good an amusement as either of the former. 
This entertainment always brings in Harlequin, who is 
generally a magician, and in consequence of his diabolical 
art performs a thousand tricks on the rest of the persons 
of the drama, who are all fools. I have seen the pit in 
a roar of laughter at this humour, when with his sword he 
touches the glass from which another was drinking. 'Twas 
not his face they laughed at, for that was masked. They 
must have seen something vastly queer in the wooden 
sword, that neither I, nor you, sir, were you there, could 
see. 

"In winter, when their canals are frozen, every house 
is forsaken, and all people are on the ice ; sleds drawn by 
horses, and skating, are at that time the reigning amuse- 
ments. They have boats here that slide on the ice, and 
are driven by the winds. When they spread all their sails 
they go more than a mile and a half a minute, and their 
motion is so rapid the eye can scarcely accompany them. 
Their ordinary manner of travelling is very cheap and very 
convenient : they sail in covered boats drawn by horses ; 
and in these you are sure to meet people of all nations. 
Here the Dutch slumber, the French chatter, and the 
English play at cards. Any man who likes company may 
have them to his taste. For my part I generally detached 
myself from all society, and was wholly taken up in observ- 
ing the face of the country. Nothing can equal its beauty ; 
wherever I turn my eye, fine houses, elegant gardens, statues, 
grottos, vistas, presented themselves ; but when you enter 
their towns you are charmed beyond description. No 
misery is to be seen here ; every one is usefully em- 
ployed. 



100 SCOTCH AND DUTCH AGAIN 

"Scotland and this country bear the highest contrast. 
There hills and rocks intercept every prospect : here 'tis all 
a continued plain. There you might see a well-dressed 
duchess issuing from a du'ty close ; and here a dirty Dutch- 
man inhabiting a palace. The Scotch may be compared 
to a tulip planted in dung ; but I never see a Dutchman 
in his own house but I think of a magnificent Egyptian 
temple dedicated to an ox. Physic is by no means here 
taught so well as in Edinburgh : and in all Leyden there 
are but four British students, owing to all necessaries being 
so extremely dear and the professors so very lazy (the 
chemical professor excepted) that we don't much care to 
come hither." 

When the time came to make the "Inquiry into the 
State of Polite Learning" Leyden had to sufter. Gold- 
smith laid about him with no gentle hand. " Holland, 
at fii'st view, appears to have some pretensions to polite 
learning. It may be regarded as the great emporium, not 
less of literature than of every other commodity. Here, 
though destitute of what may be properly called a language 
of their own, all the languages are understood, cultivated 
and spoken. All useful inventions in arts, and new dis- 
coveries in science, are published here almost as soon as 
at the places which first produced them. Its individuals 
have the same faults, however, with the Germans, of making 
more use of then* memory than their j udgment. The chief 
employment of then- literati is to criticise, or answer, the 
new performances which appear elsewhere. 

" A dearth of wit in France or England naturally pro- 
duces a scarcity in Holland. What Ovid says of Echo 
may be applied here, 

' nee reticere loquenti, 

Nee prior ipsa loqui didicit ' 



"THE TRAVELLER" 101 

they wait till something new comes out from others ; 
examine its merits and reject it, or make it reverberate 
through the rest of Europe. 

" After all, I know not whether they should be allowed 
any national character for polite learning. All then- taste 
is derived to them from neighbouring nations, and that in 
a language not their own. They somewhat resemble their 
brokers, who trade for immense sums without having any 
capital." 

Goldsmith did not finish there. His observations on the 
Continent served him, with a frugality that he did not 
otherwise practise, at least thrice. He used them in the 
" Inquiry into Polite Learning," he used them in the story 
of the Philosophic Vagabond in the Vicar of Wakefield, and 
still again in "The Traveller". This is the summary of 
Holland in that poem : — 

To men of other minds my fancy flies, 
Embosom'd in the deep where Holland lies. 
Methinks her patient sons before me stand, 
Where the broad ocean leans against the land. 
And, sedulous to stop the coming tide, 
Lift the tall rampire's artificial pride. 
Onward, methinks, and diligently slow, 
The firm connected bulwark seems to grow ; 
Spreads its long arms amidst the watery roar, 
Scoops out an empire, and usurps the shore. 
While the pent ocean, rising o'er the pile. 
Sees an amphibious world beneath him smile ; 
The slow canal, the yellow-blossom'd vale, 
The willow-tufted bank, the gliding sail. 
The crowded mart, the cultivated plain, 
A new creation rescued from his reign. 

Thus, while around the wave-subjected soil 
Impels the native to repeated toil. 
Industrious habits in each bosom reign, 
And industry begets a love of gain. 



102 UNCLF CONTARINE'S FLOWER 

Hence all the good from opulence that springs, 

With all those ills superfluous treasure brings, 

Are here display'd. Their much-lov'd wealth imparts 

Convenience, plenty, elegance, and arts : 

But view them closer, craft and fraud appear. 

Even liberty itself is barter'd here. 

At gold's superior charms all freedom flies, 

The needy sell it, and the rich man buys; 

A land of tyrants, and a den of slaves, 

Here wretches seek dishonourable graves. 

And calmly bent, to servitude conform. 

Dull as their lakes that slumber in the storm. 

It was with his good Uncle Contarine's money that Gold- 
smith travelled to Leyden. The time came to leave, and 
Oliver was again without resources. He borrowed a suf- 
ficient sum from Dr. Ellis, a fellow-countryman living there, 
and prepared for his departure. But on his way from the 
doctor's he had to pass a florist's, in whose window there 
chanced to be exhibited the very variety of flower which 
Uncle Contarine had so often praised and expressed a 
desire to possess. Given the man and the moment, what 
can you expect ? Goldsmith, chief among those blessed 
natures who never inteiTupt a generous impulse, plunged 
into the florist's house and despatched a costly bundle of 
bulbs to Ireland. The next day he left Leyden with a 
guinea in his pocket, no clothes but those he stood in, 
and a flute in his hand. For the rest you must see the 
story of the Philosophic Vagabond. 

Evelyn records an amusing experience at Leyden in 
August, 1641: "I was brought acquainted with a Bur- 
gundian Jew, who had married an apostate Kentish woman. 
I asked him divers questions ; he told me, amongst other 
things, that the World should never end, that our souls 
transmigi'ated, and that even those of the most holy persons 
did penance in the bodies of brutes after death, and so he 



THE BURGUNDIAN JEW 103 

interpreted the banishment and savage Kfe of Nebuchad- 
nezzar ; that all the Jews should rise again, and be led to 
Jerusalem ; that the Romans only were the occasion of our 
Saviour's death, whom he affirmed (as the Turks do) to be 
a gTeat prophet, but not the Messiah. He showed me 
several books of their devotion, which he had translated 
into English for the instruction of his wife ; he told me 
that when the Messiah came, all the ships, barks, and 
vessels of Holland should, by the power of certain strange 
whu'lwinds, be loosed from their anchors, and transported 
in a moment to all the desolate ports and havens through- 
out the world, wherever the dispersion was, to convey their 
brethren and tribes to the Holy City ; with other such-like 
stuff. He was a merry drunken fellow, but would by no 
means handle any money (for something I purchased of 
him), it being Saturday ; but desired me to leave it in the 
window, meaning to receive it on Sunday morning." 

In an old book-shop at Leyden I bought from an odd 
lot of English books, chiefly minor fiction for travellers, the 
Colloqiiia Peripatetica of John Duncan, LL.D., Professor 
of H ebrew in the New College, Edinbm-gh. " I'm first a 
Christian, next a Catholic, then a Calvinist, fourth a Paedo- 
baptist, and fifth a Presbyterian. I cannot reverse the 
order," is one of his emphatic utterances. Here are others, 
not unconnected with the country we are travelling in : 
" Poor Erasmus truckled all his life for a hat. If he could 
only have been made a cardinal ! You see the longing for 
it in his very features, and can't help regarding him with 
mingled respect and pity." Of Thomas h. Kempis, the 
recluse of Deventer : " A fine fellow, but hazy, and weak 
betimes. He and his school tend (as some one has well 
said) to make humility and humiliation change places." 
Finally, of the Bible : " The three best translations of the 



104 THE KERMIS 

Bible, in my opinion, are, in order of merit, the English, 
the Dutch, and Diodati's Italian version. As to Luther, 
he is admirable in rendering the prophets. He says either 
just what the prophets did say, or that which you see at 
once they might have said." 

Leyden has two vast churches, St. Peter's and St. 
Pancras's. Both are immense and unadorned ; I think 
that St. Pancras's is the lightest church I was ever in. 
St. Peter's ought to be filled with memorials of the town's 
illustrious sons, but it has few. As I have said elsewhere, 
I asked in vain for the grave of Jan Steen, who was bm'ied 
here. 

It was at Leyden that I saw my first Kermis, or fair, 
seven years ago, and ate my first poffertjes and wafelen. 
Writing as a foreigner, in no way concerned with the 
matter, I may express regret that the Kermis is not what 
it was in Holland. Possibly were one living in Holland, 
one would at once join the anti-Kermis party ; but I hope 
not. In Amsterdam the anti-Kermis party has succeeded, 
and though one may still in that city at certain seasons 
eat wafelen and poffertjes, the old glories have departed, 
just as they have departed from so many English towns 
which once broke loose for a few nights every year. Even 
Barnet Fair is not what it was. 

Noise seems to be the principal objection. Pei-sonally, I 
never saw any drunkenness ; and there is so little real 
revehy that one turns one's back on the naphtha lamps in 
this town and that, in Leyden and the Hoorn, Apeldoorn 
and Middelburg, wdth the sad conviction that the times are 
out of joint, and that Teniers and Ostade and Brouwer, 
were they reborn to-day, would probably either have to 
take to painting Christmas supplements or earn then- 
living at a reputable trade. It is not that the Dutch 



POFFERTJES AND WAFELEN 105 

no longer drink, but that they now do it with more 
privacy. 

The travelling temples reserved for the honour of pof- 
fertjes and wafelen are the most noticeable features of 
any Kermis. They are divided, quite like restaurants, 
into little cubicles for separate parties. Flowers and 
ferns make them gay; the waiters may even wear even- 
ing dress, but this is a refinement which would have 
annoyed Jan Steen ; on the tables is white American 
cloth ; and curtains of coloured material and muslin, 
with bright ribbons, add to the vivacity of the occasion. 
To eat pofFertjes and wafelen is no light matter : one 
must regard it as a ritual. 

Poifertjes come first — these are little round pancakey 
blobs, twisted and covered with butter and sugar. Then 
the wafelen, which are oblong wafers stamped in a mould 
and also buttered and sugared. You eat twenty -four pof- 
fertjes and two wafelen : that is, at the fii'st onset. After- 
wards, as many more as you wish. Lager beer is drunk 
with them. Some prefer Frambozen lemonade. 

To eat them is a duty ; to see them cooked is a joy. I 
have watched the cooks almost for hours. The poifertjes 
are made by hundreds at once, in a tray indented with 
little hollows over a fire. The cook is continually busy 
in twisting the little dabs of paste into the hollows and 
removing those that are ready. The wafelen are baked in 
iron moulds (there is one in Jan Steen's "Oyster Feast") 
laid on a rack in the fire. The cook has eight moulds 
in working order at once. When the eighth is filled 
from the pail of batter at his side, the first is done ; and 
so on, ceaselessly, all day and half the night, like a 
natiu'al law. 

A woman stands by to spread butter and sugar, and 



106 THF ORIGIN OF QUICK LUNCHES 

the plate is whisked away in a moment. The Americans 
boast of their quick lunches ; but I am convinced that they 
boiTOwed celerity in cooking and serving from some Knicker- 
bocker deviser of poffertjes and wafelen in the early days of 
New York. I wonder that Washington Irving omitted to 
say so. 



CHAPTER VIII 

LEYDEN'S PAINTERS, A FANATIC AND A HERO 

Rembrandt of the Rhine — His early life at Leyden — Jan Steen — Jan van 
Goyen — Brewer and painter — Pictures for beer — Jan Steen's grave 
—His delicacy and charm — His native refinement — A painter of 
hands — Jan Steen and Morland — Jan Steen and Hogarth — The Red 
Sea— The Flood— Jan of Leyden— The siege of Miinster— Gigantic 
madness — Gerard Dou — Godfrey Schalcken — Frans van Mieris— 
WiUiam van Mieris — Gabriel Metsu — Beckford's satire — Leyden's 
poor pictures — The siege of Leyden — Adrian van der Werf. 

LEYDEN was the mother of some precious human clay. 
Among her sons was the greatest of Dutch painters, 
Rembrandt van Rijn ; the most lovable of them, Jan Steen ; 
and the most patient of them, Gerard Dou. 

Of Rembrandt's genius it is late in the day to write, 
nor have I the power. We have seen certain of his pictures 
at The Hague ; we shall see others at Amsterdam. I can 
add nothing to what is said in those places, but here, in 
Leyden (which has ten thousand stuffed birds, and not a 
single picture by her greatest son), one may dwell upon his 
early days and think of him wandering as a boy in the 
surrounding country unconsciously absorbing effects of 
light and shade. 

Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn was born on July 
15, 1606, probably in a house at the corner of the Wed- 
desteg, near the Wittepoort, on the bank of the Rhine. 
It was the same year that gave ^nglsind' Macbeth and Kijig' 

(107) 



108 REMBRANDT'S YOUTH 

Lear. His father was a miller, his mother the daughter of 
a Leyden baker : it was destined that the son of these 
simple folk should be the greatest painter that the north of 
Europe has produced. 

They did not foresee such a fate, but they seem suf- 
ficiently to have realised that their son had unusual aptitude 
for him to be sent to study law at the University. But he 
meant from the first to paint, and when he should have 
been studying text-books he was studying nature. The old 
miller, having a wise head, gave way, and Rembrandt was 
allowed to enter the studio of Jacob van Swanenburgh. 
That was probably in 1622, when he was sixteen ; in 1624 
he knew so much more than Swanenburgh had ever dreamed 
of that he passed on to Amsterdam, to see what could be 
learned from Peter Lastman. But Lastman was of little 
use, and Rembrandt soon returned to Leyden. 

There he set up his own studio, painting, however, at his 
father's house — possibly even in the mill itself — as much 
as he could ; and for seven years he taught younger men at 
Leyden his secrets. He remained at Leyden until 1631, 
moving then again to Amsterdam and beginning the 
greatest period of his life. At Leyden he had painted 
much and etched much ; perhaps the portrait of himself in 
a steel gorget, at The Hague, is his finest Leyden picture. 
It was not until 1632, the year in which he married his 
Saskia, that the first of his most famous works, " The School 
of Anatomy," was painted. Yet Leyden may consider that 
it was she that showed the way; she may well be proud. 

Rembrandt's later life belongs to Amsterdam ; but 
Leyden had other illustrious sons who were faithful to 
her to the end. Chief of these was Jan Steen. 

Harmens the miller, as we have seen, became the father 
of a boy named Rembrandt in 1606 ; it was twenty years 



JAN STEEN 109 

later that Steen the brewer rejoiced over the birth of a son 
called Jan. 

Of Jan's childhood we know nothing, but as a young 
man he was sent by his father to Utrecht to study under 
Nicholas Knupfer. Then he passed on to Adrian van 
Ostade and probably to Adrian Brouwer, with both of 
whom and Frans Hals we saw him carousing, after his 
wont, in a picture by Brouwer in Baron Steengracht's 
house at The Hague. Finally he became the pupil of Jan 
van Goyen, painter of the beautiful " Valkhof at Nymegen," 
No. 991 in the Ryks Museum, a picture which always makes 
me think of Andrew Marvell's poem on the Bermudas. 
Like many another art pupil, Jan Steen married his 
master's daughter. 

Jan van Goyen, I might add, was another of Leyden's 
sons. He was born in 1596 and he died at The Hag-ue in 
1666, while London was suffering under the Plague. 

Jan Steen seems to have intended to make brewing his 
staff and painting merely his cane ; but good nature and 
a terrible thirst were too much for him. From brewing; he 
descended to keeping a tavern, " in which occupation," to 
quote Ireland, " he was himself his best customer ". After 
a while, having exhausted his cellar, he took seriously to 
painting in order to renew it, paying for his liquor with his 
brush. Thus " for a long time his works were to be found 
only in the hands of dealers in wine ". Who, after this, 
shall have the hardihood to speak evil of the grape ? 

Jan is not supposed to have lived at Leyden after his 
marriage to Margaretta van Goyen, in 1649, until 1669, 
when his father died. In 1672 he is known to have taken 
a tavern at Leyden at the Lange Brug. 

Of the intervening years little is known. He was pro- 
bably at Haarlem part of the time and at The Hague 



no A MASTER OF CHARM 

part of the time. In 1667 he paid his rent — only twenty - 
nine florins — with three pictures "painted well as he was 
able ". Margaret ta died in 1669 — a merry large woman 
we must suppose her from her appearance in Jan's pictures, 
and the mother of four or five children who may often be 
seen in the same scenes. Jan mamed again in 1673 and 
died in 1697. 

He was buried in St. Peter's Church, Levden, leavincr 
more than five hundred pictures to his name. The youth 
who, in the absence of the koster, accompanied me through 
St. Peter's Church, so far from knowing where Jan Steen 
was buried, had never even heard his name. (And at the 
Western Church in Amsterdam, where Rembrandt is said to 
have been buried, his resting-place cannot be pointed out. 
But never a Dutch admiral's grave is in doubt.) 

For all his roystering and recklessness, for all his drinking 
and excess, Jan Steen's work is essentially delicate. He 
painted the sublimated essence of comedy. Teniers, Ostade, 
Brouwer are coarse and boorish beside him ; Metsu and 
Mieris genteel. Even when he is painting low life Jan 
Steen is distinguished, a gentleman. And now and then he 
touches the springs of tears, so exquisite in his sympathetic 
understanding. He remains the most lovable painter in 
Holland, and the tenderest — in a country where tenderness 
is not easily found. 

Look, for example, at the two pictures at The Hague 
which are reproduced opposite pages 74 and 80. The first 
represents the Steen family. The j oily Jan himself is smok- 
ing at the table; the old brewer and the elder Mrs. Steen ai'e 
in the foreground. I doubt if any picture exists in which 
the sense of innocent festivity is better expressed. It is all 
perhaps rather a muddle : Mrs. Steen has some hai'd work 
before her if the house is to be restored to a Dutch pitch 



STEEN AND MORLAND 111 

of cleanliness and order ; but how jolly every one is ! Jan 
himself looks just as we should expect. 

The triumph of the " Oyster Feast," on the opposite page, 
seems to me to be the girl kneeling in the corner. Here 
is drawing indeed. The charge brought by the mysterious 
painter in Balzac's story against Pourbus, that one was 
unable to walk behind the figure in his picture, could never 
hold with Jan Steen. His every figure stands out surrounded 
by atmosphere, and never more so than in the "Oyster 
Feast ". Again, in the " Cat's Dancing Lesson " (opposite 
page 158), what drawing there is in the girl playing the 
pipe, and what life in the whole scene ! 

It is odd that Jan Steen in Holland, and George Morland 
in England, both topers, should have had this secret of 
simple charm so highly developed : one of nature's curious 
ironies, very confusing to the moralist. In the second 
Hague picture (opposite page 80) Leyden's genial tosspot 
has achieved a farther triumph — he has painted one of the 
most radiantly delicate figures in all art. One must go 
to Italy and seek among the early Madonnas to find any- 
thing to set beside the sweet Wordsworthian character of 
this little Dutch gii'l who feeds the animals. 

It was Jan Steen's way to scamp much of every picture ; 
but in every picture you will find one figure that could not 
be excelled. Nothing probably could be more slovenly, 
more hideously un painted, than, for example, the bed and 
the guitar-case in the "Sick Woman" — No. 2246 at the 
Ryks Museum — opposite page 22. But I doubt if human 
skill has ever transcended the painting of the woman's face, 
or the sheer drawing of her. Eook at her arm and hand 
— Jan Steen never went wrong with arms and hands. 
Look at the hands of the boy playing the pipe in the 
picture opposite page 74 ; look at the woman filling a 



112 THE DUTCH BURNS 

pipe at the table. To-day we are accustomed to pictures 
containing children : they are as necessary as sunsets to 
picture buyers : all our figure-painters layish their talents 
upon them ; but who had eyer troubled to paint a real 
peasant child before Jan Steen ? It was this rough toper 
that showed the way, and no one since has ever excelled 
him. 

Parallels have been drawn between Jan Steen and 
Hoorarth. and there are critics who would make Jan a 
moralist too. But I do not see how we can compare 
them. Steen did what Hogarth could not, Hogarth did 
what Steen would not. Hogarth is rarely charming, Steen 
is rarely otherwise. It is not Hogarth with whom I should 
associate Jan, but Burns. He is the Dutch Bums — in 
colour. 

I wish we had more facts concerning him, for he must 
have been a oreat man and humorist. The story is 
told of Hogarth that on being commissioned to paint a 
scriptural picture of the Red Sea for a too parsimonious 
patron who had beaten him down and down, he rebuked 
him for his meanness by producing a canvas entirely 
covered with red paint. " But what is this .- " the patron 
asked. '"The Red Sea — surely." "Where then are the 
Israelites?" ** They have all crossed over." "And 
Pharaoh's hosts .- " "They are all drc vned." The story 
is perhaps an invention; but a somewhat similar joke is 
credited to Jan Steen. His commission was the F.ood, and 
his picture when finished consisted of a sheet of water with 
a Dutch cheese in the midst bearing the arms of Ley den. 
The cheese and the arms, he pointed out, proved that people 
had been on the earth; as for Xoah and the ark, they 
were out of the picture. 

Jan Steen's picture of "A Quaker's Funeral" I have 



JAN OF LEYDEN 113 

not seen, but according to Pilkington it is impossible to 
behold it and refrain fiom laughter. The subject does not 
strike one as being in itself mirthful. 

A century earlier Leyden had produced another Jan, 
separated from Jan Steen by a difference wide asunder as 
the poles. Yet a very wonderful man in his brief season, 
standing high among the world's great madmen. I mean 
Jan Bockelson, the Anabaptist, known as Jan of Leyden, 
who, beginning as pure enthusiast, succumbed, as so many 
a leader of women has done, to the intoxication of authority, 
and became the slave of grandiose ambition and excesses. 
Every country has had its mock Messiahs : they rise 
periodically in England, not less at the present day than 
in the darker ages (hysteria being more powerful than 
light) ; yet the history of none of these spiritual monarchs 
can compare with that of the tailor's son of Leyden. 

The story is told in many places, but nowhere with 
such dramatic picturesqueness as by Professor Karl Pearson 
in his Ethic of FreetJiought. " As the illegitimate son 
of a tailor in Leyden," says Professor Pearson — ^Jan's 
mother was the maid of his father's wife — " his early life 
was probably a harsh and bitter one. Very young he 
wandered from home, impressed with the miseries of his 
class and with a general feeling of much injustice in the 
world. Four years he spent in England seeing the poor 
driven off the land by the sheep ; then we find him in 
Flanders, mamed, but still in vague search of the Eldorado ; 
again roaming, he visits Lisbon and Liibeck as a sailor, 
ever seeking and inquiring. Suddenly a new light bursts 
upon him in the teaching of Melchior Hofmann [the 
Anabaptist] ; he fills himself with dreams of a glorious 
kingdom on earth, the rule of justice and of love. Still 
a little while and the prophet Mathys crosses his path, 
8 



114 THE MAKINGS OF A FANATIC 

and tells him of the New Sion and the extermination of 
the godless." 

Mathys, or Jan Mathiesen, was a baker of Haarlem, 
who, constituted an Anabaptist bishop, was preaching the 
new gospel through the Netherlands and gathering recruits 
to the community of God's saints which had been estab- 
lished at Miinster. "Full of hope for the future," says 
Professor Pearson, "Jan sets out for Miinster to join the 
saints. Still young, handsome, imbued with a fiery en- 
thusiasm, actor by nature and even by choice, he has no 
small influence on the spread of Anabaptism in that city. 
The youth of twenty-three expounds to the followers of 
Rottmann the beauties of his ideal kino;dom of the o-ood 
and the true. With his whole soul he preaches to them 
the redemption of the oppressed, the destruction of tyranny, 
the community of goods, and the rule of justice and 
brotherly love. Women and maidens slip away to the 
secret gatherings of the youthful enthusiast ; the glowing 
young prophet of Ley den becomes the centre of interest 
in Miinster. Dangerous, very dangerous ground, when 
the pure of heart are not around him ; when the spirit 
' chosen by God ' is to proclaim itself free of the flesh. 

"The world has judged Jan harshly, condemned him 
to endless execration. It were better to have cursed the 
generations of oppression, the flood of persecution, which 
forced the toiler to revolt, the Anabaptists to madness. 
Under other circumstances the noble enthusiasm, with 
other surroundings the strong will, of Jan of Ley den might 
have left a different mark on the page of history. Dragged 
down in this whirlpool of fanaticism, sensuaUty, and despair, 
we can only look upon him as a factor of the historic j udg- 
ment, a necessary actor in that tragedy of Miinster, which 
forms one of the most solemn chapters of the Greater Bible." 



A KING OF RIGHTEOUSNESS 115 

Gradually Jan rose to be head of the saints, Mathiesen 
having been killed, and none other displaying so much 
strength of purpose or magnetic enthusiasm. And here his 
mind gave way. Like so many absolute rulers before and 
since, he could not resist the ecstacies of supremacy. To 
resume Professor Pearson's narrative : " The sovereign of 
Sion — although * since the flesh is dead, gold to him is but 
as dung' — yet thinks fit to appear in all the pomp of 
earthly majesty. He appoints a court, of which Knipper- 
dollinch is chancellor, and wherein there are many officers 
from chamberlain to cook. He forms a body-guard, whose 
members are dressed in silk. Two pages wait upon the king, 
one of whom is a son of his grace the bishop of Minister. 
The great officers of state are somewhat wondrously attired, 
one breech red, the other grey, and on the sleeves of their 
coats are embroidered the arms of Sion — the earth-sphere 
pierced by two crossed swords, a sign of universal sway 
and its instruments — while a golden finger-ring is token of 
their authority in Sion. The king himself is magnificently 
arrayed in gold and purple, and as insignia of his office, he 
causes sceptre and spurs of gold to be made. Gold ducats 
are melted down to form crowns for the queen and him- 
self; and lastly a golden globe pierced by two swords 
and surmounted by a cross with the words, 'A King of 
Righteousness o'er all ' is borne before him. The attend- 
ants of the Chancellor KnipperdoUinch are dressed in red 
with the crest, a hand raising aloft the sword of justice. 
Nay, even the queen and the fourteen queenlets must have 
a separate court and brilliant uniforms. 

" Thrice a week the king goes in glorious array to the 
market-place accompanied by his body-guards and officers 
of state, while behind ride the fifteen queens. On the 
market-place stands a magnificent throne with silken 



116 MUNSTER FALLS 

cushions and canopy, whereon the tailor-monarch takes 
his seat, and alongside him sits his chief queen. Knipper- 
dollinch sits at his feet. A page on his left bears the book 
of the law, the Old Testament ; another on his right an 
unsheathed sword. The book denotes that he sits on the 
throne of David ; the sword that he is the king of the 
just, who is appointed to exterminate all unrighteousness. 
Bannock-Bernt is court-chaplain, and preaches in the 
market-place before the king. The sermon over, justice 
is administered, often of the most terrible kind ; and then 
in hke state the king and his court return home. On the 
streets he is greeted with cries of: ' Hail in the name of 
the Lord. God be praised ! '" 

Meanwhile underneath all this riot of splendour and 
power and sensuality, the pangs of starvation were begin- 
ning to be felt. For the army of the bishop of Miinster 
was outside the citv and the siege was very studiously main- 
tained. The privations became more and more terrible, 
and more and more terrible the means of allaying them. 
The bodies of citizens that had died were eaten ; and then 
men and women and children were killed in order that 
they might be eaten too. Under such conditions, is it 
any wonder that Miinster became a city of the mad, mad 
beyond the sane man's wildest dreams of excess ? 

A few of the least demented of Jan's followers at length 
determined that the tragedy must cease, and the city was 
delivered into the bishop's hands. " What judgment," 
writes Professor Pearson, " his grace the bishop thinks fit 
to pass on the leaders of Sion at least deserves record. 
Rottmann has fallen by St. Martm's Church, fighting 
sword in hand, but Jan of Leyden and KnipperdoUinch 
are brought prisoners before this shepherd of the folk. 
Scoffingly he asks Jan : ' Art thou a king ? ' Simple, yet 



JAN OF LEYDEN'S FATE 117 

endlessly deep the reply : ' Art thou a bishop ? ' Both 
alike false to their callings — as father of men and shep- 
herd of souls. Yet the one cold, self-seeking sceptic, the 
other ignorant, passionate, fanatic ideahst. ' Why hast 
thou destroyed the town and my folk ? ' ' Priest, I have 
not destroyed one little maid of thine. Thou hast again 
thy town, and I can repay thee a hundredfold.' The 
bishop demands with much curiosity how this miserable 
captive can possibly repay him. ' I know we must die, 
and die ten*ibly, yet before we die, shut us up in an iron 
cage, and send us round through the land, charge the 
curious folk a few pence to see us, and thou wilt soon 
gather together all thy heart's desire.' The jest is grim, 
but the king of Sion has the advantage of his grace 
the bishop. Then follows torture, but there is little to 
extract, for the king still holds himself an instrument sent 
by God — though it were for the punishment of the world. 
Sentence is read on these men — placed in an iron cage they 
shall be shown round the bishop's diocese, a tenible warning 
to his subjects, and then brought back to Monster; there 
with glowing pincers their flesh shall be torn from the bones, 
till the death-stroke be given with red-hot dagger in throat 
and heart. For the rest let the mangled remains be placed 
in iron cages swung from the tower of St. Lambert's Church. 
" On the 26th of January, 1536, Jan Bockelson and 
Knipperdollinch meet their fate. A high scaffolding is 
erected in the market-place, and before it a lofty throne 
for his grace the bishop, that he may glut his vengeance to 
the full. Let the rest pass in silence. The most reliable 
authorities tell us that the Anabaptists remained calm and 
firm to the last. * Art thou a king .? ' ' Art thou a bishop .? ' 
The iron cages still hang on the church tower at Miinster ; 
placed as a warning, they have become a show; perhaps 



118 GERARD DOU 

some day they will be treasured as weird mentors of the 
truth which the world has yet to learn from the story of 
the Kingdom of God in Miinster." 

A living German artist of great power, named Joseph 
Sattler, too much of whose time has recently been given to 
designing book-plates, produced some few years ago an ex- 
traordinary illustrated history of the Anabaptists in Miinster. 
Many artists have essayed to portray madness, but I know 
of no work more terrible than his. 

We have travelled far from Ley den's peaceful studios. 
It is time to look at the work of Gerard Dou. Rembrandt 
we have seen was the son of a miller, Jan Steen of a brewer ; 
the elder Dou was a glazier. His son Gerard was born in 
Ley den in 1613. The father was so far interested in the 
boy's gifts that he apprenticed him to an engraver when 
he was nine. At the age of eleven he passed to the studio 
of a painter on glass, and on St. Valentine's day, 1628, he 
became a pupil of Rembrandt. From Rembrandt, how- 
ever, he seems to have learned only the charm of contrasts 
of light and shade. None of the great rugged strength of 
the master is to be seen in his minute and patient work, in 
which the genius of taking pains is always apparent. " He 
would frequently," says Ireland, " paint six or seven days 
on a hand, and, still more wonderful, twice the time on 
the handle of a broom. . . . The minuteness of his per- 
formance so affected his sight that he wore spectacles at 
the age of thirty." 

Gerard Don's success was not only artistic ; it was also 
financial. Rembrandt's prices did not compare with those 
of his pupil, whose art coming more within the sympa- 
thetic range and understanding of the ordinary man 
naturally was more sought after than the Titanic and 
less comfortable canvasses of the greater craftsman. 




THE YOUXG HOUSEKEEPER 

GEKARU DOU 
From the picture in the Mariritshiiis 



"THE YOUNG HOUSEKEEPER" 119 

Dou did exceedingly well, one of his patrons even paying 
him a yearly honorarium of a thousand florins for the 
privilege of having the refusal of each new picture. " The 
Poulterer's Shop'' at our National Gallery is a perfect 
example of his fastidious minuteness and charm. But he 
painted pictures also with a tenderer brush. I give on the 
opposite page a reproduction of the most charming picture 
by Gerard Dou that I know — " The Young Housekeeper " 
at The Hague. This is a very miracle of painting in every 
inch, and yet the pains that have been expended upon the 
cabbage and the fish are not for a moment disproportion- 
ate : the cabbage and the fish, for all their finish, remain 
subordinate and appropriate details. The picture is the 
picture of the mother and the children. " The Night 
School" — No. 795 in the Ryks Museum at Amsterdam — 
is, I believe, more generally admired, but "The Young 
Housekeeper " is the better. " The Night School " might 
be described as the work of a pocket Rembrandt ; " The 
Young Housekeeper " is the work of an artist of rare in- 
dividuality and sympathy. At the Wallace Collection 
may be seen a hermit by Dou quite in his best nocturnal 
manner. 

Gerard Dou died at Leyden, where he had spent nearly 
all his quiet life, in 1676. He is buried at St. Peter's, but 
his grave does not seem to be known there. 

Dou had many imitators, some of whom studied under 
him. One of the chief was Godfried Schalcken of Dort, 
whose picture of an " Old Woman Scouring a Pan " may 
be seen in the National Gallery, while the Wallace Collec- 
tion has several examples of his skill. Schalcken seems to 
have been a man of gi-eat brusquerie, if two stories told by 
Ireland of his sojourn in England are true. William III., 
for example, when sitting for his picture, with a candle in 



120 THE TWO MIERIS 

his hand, was suffered by Schalcken to burn his fingers. 
" One is at a loss," says Ireland, " to determine which v/as 
most to blame, the monarch for want of feeling, or the 
painter of politeness. The following circumstance, however, 
will place the deficiency of the latter beyond controversy. 
A lady sitting for her portrait, who was more admired for 
a beautiful hand than a handsome face, after the head was 
finished, asked him if she should take off her glove, that he 
might insert the hand in the picture, to which he replied, 
he always painted the hands fi-om those of his valet." The 
most attractive picture by Schalcken that I have seen is 
a girl sewing by candle light, in the Wallace Collection. 
It pairs off with the charming little Gerard Dou at the 
Ryks— No. 796. 

Dou said that the " Prince of his pupils " was Frans van 
Mieris of Delft, who combined the manner and predilec- 
tions of his master with those of Terburg. He was very 
popular with collectors, but I do not experience any great 
joy in the presence of his work, which, with ail its miracul- 
ous deftness, is yet lacking in personal feeling. Mieris, 
says Ireland, " was frequently paid a ducat per hour for 
his works. His intimacy and friendship for Jan Steen, 
that excellent painter and bon vivant, seems to have led 
him into much inconvenience. After a night's debauch, 
quitting Jan Steen, he fell into a common drain ; whence 
he was extricated by a poor cobbler and his wife, and, 
treated by them with much kindness, he repaid the obli- 
gation by presenting them with a small picture, which, by 
his recommendation, was sold for a considerable sum." 

The amazingly minute picture of "The Poulterer's 
Shop " which hangs in the National Gallery as a pendant 
to Don's work with the same title, is by William van 
Mieris, the son of Don's favourite pupil. He also was 




BRKAKFAST 

(JABKIRL MEISU 
Frcjn the picticrc in the Ryks Museum 



GABRIEL METSU 121 

born at Leyden, that teeming mother of painters. Frans 
van Mieris, his father, died at Leyden in 1681 ; William 
died at Leyden in 1747. 

Above the work of Frans van Mieris I would put that of 
Gabriel Metsu, another of Don's pupils, and also a son of 
Leyden, where he was born in 1630. Upon Metsu's work 
Terburg, however, exercised more influence than did Gerard 
Dou. "The Music Lesson" and "The Duet" at the 
National Gallery are good examples of his pleasant paint- 
ing. Even better is his work at the Wallace Collection. 
He died in 1667 in Amsterdam, where one of his best 
pictures " The Breakfast " — No. 1553 at the Ryks — may 
be seen. There are many fine examples at the Louvre. 
He was always graceful, always charming, with a favourite 
model — perhaps his wife — the pleasant plump woman who 
occurs again and as^ain in his work. She is in "The 
Breakfast " (see the opposite page). 

Mention of Gerard Dou and his pupils reminds me of 
a little-known satire on art-criticism written by " Vathek " 
Beckford . Biograpli ical Memoirs of Eoctraordinary Painters 
it is called, among the painters being Sucrewasser of Vienna, 
and Watersouchy of Amsterdam. It is Watersouchy who 
concerns us, for he was a Dutch figure painter who carried 
the art of detail farther than it had been carried before. 
I quote a little from Beckford's account of this genius, since 
it helps to bring back a day when the one thing most 
desired by the English collector was a Dutch picture — still 
life, boors, cows, ruins, or domestic interior — no matter 
what subject or how mechanically painted so long as it 
was done minutely enough. 

" Whilst he remained at Amsterdam, young Watersouchy 
was continually improving, and arrived to such perfection 
in copying point lace, that Mierhop entreated his father 



122 THE GREAT WATERSOUCHY 

to cultivate these talents, and to place his son under the 
patronage of Gerard Dow, ever renowned for the exquisite 
finish of his pieces. Old Watersouchy stared at the pro- 
posal, and solemnly asked his wife, to whose opinion he 
always paid a deference, whether painting was a genteel 
profession for their son. Mierhop, who overheard their 
conversation, smiled disdainfully at the question, and 
Madam Watersouchy answered, that she believed it was 
one of your liberal arts. In few words, the father was 
persuaded, and Gerard Dow, then resident at Leyden, 
prevailed upon to receive the son as a disciple. 

"Our young artist had no sooner his foot within his 
master's apartment, than he found every object in harmony 
with his own disposition. The colours finely ground, and 
ranged in the neatest boxes, the pencils so delicate as to be 
almost imperceptible, the varnish in elegant phials, the 
easel j ust where it ought to be, filled him wdth agreeable 
sensations, and exalted ideas of his master's merit. Gerard 
Dow on his side was equally plegised, when he saw him 
moving about with all due circumspection, and noticing 
his little prettinesses at every step. He therefore began his 
pupil's initiation with great alacrity, first teaching him 
cautiously to open the cabinet door, lest any particles of 
dust should be dislodged and fix upon his canvas, and 
advising him never to take up his pencil without sitting 
motionless a few minutes, till every mote casually floating 
in the air should be settled. Such instructions were not 
thrown away upon Watersouchy : he treasured them up, 
and refined, if possible, upon such refinements." 

In course of time Watersouchy gained the patronage of 
a rich but frugal banker named Baise-la-^lain, who seeing 
his value, arranged for the painter to occupy a room in his 
house. "Xobodv," Beckford continues, "but the master 



BECKFORD'S SATIRE 123 

of the house was allowed to enter this sanctuary. Here 
our artist remained six weeks in grinding his colours, com- 
posing an admirable varnish, and preparing his canvass, for 
a performance he intended as his chef d'oeuvre. A fort- 
night more passed before he decided upon a subject. At 
last he determined to commemorate the opulence of 
Monsieur Baise-la-Main, by a perspective of his counting- 
house. He chose an interesting moment, when heaps of 
gold lay glittering on the counter, and citizens of distinc- 
tion were soliciting a secure repository for their plate and 
jewels. A Muscovite wrapped in fur, and an Italian 
glistening in brocade, occupied the foreground. The eye 
glancing over these figures highly finished, was directed 
through the windows of the shop into the area in front of 
the cathedral ; of which, however, nothing was discovered, 
except two sheds before its entrance, where several barbers 
were represented at their different occupations. An effect 
of sunshine upon the counter discovered every coin that 
was scattered upon its surface. On these the painter had 
bestowed such intense labour, that their very legends were 
distinguishable. 

" It would be in vain to attempt conveying, by words, 
an idea adequate to this chef d^oeuvre, which must have 
been seen to have been duly admired. In three months it 
was far advanced ; during which time our artist employed 
his leisure hours in practising jigs and minuets on the 
violin, and writing the first chapter of Genesis on a watch- 
paper, which he adorned with a miniature of Adam and 
Eve, so exquisitely finished, that every ligament in their 
fig-leaves was visible. This little jeu d^ esprit he presented 
to Madam Merian." 

Ley den's earliest painter was Lucas Jacobz, known as 
Lucas van Leyden, who was born in 1494. He painted 



124 THE SIEGE OF LEYDEN 

in oil, in distemper and on glass; he took his subjects 
from nature and from scriptm-e ; he engi-aved better than 
he painted ; and he was the friend of Diirer. Leyden 
possesses his triptych, " The Last Judgment," which to me 
is interesting rather as a piece of pioneering than as a 
work apart. After settling for a while at Middelburg and 
Antwerp, he returned to Leyden, where he died in 1533. 

In spite of her record as the mother of great painters, 
Leyden treats pictures with some indifference. The Muni- 
cipal Museum has little that is of value. Of most interest 
perhaps is the Peter van Veen, opposite " The Last Judg- 
ment," representing a scene in the siege of Leyden by the 
Spaniards under Valdez in 1574, which has a companion 
upstairs by Van Bree, depicting the Burgomaster's heroic 
feat of opportunism in the same period of stress. 

Adrian Van der Werf was this Burgomaster's name (his 
monument stands in the Van der Werf park), and nothing 
but his courao^e and address at a critical moment saved the 

CD 

city. Motley tells the story in a fine passage. " Mean- 
time, the besieged city was at its last gasp. The burghers 
had been in a state of uncertainty for many days ; being 
aware that the fleet had set forth for their relief, but 
knowing full well the thousand obstacles which it had to 
surmount. They had guessed its progress by the illumina- 
tion from the blazing villages ; they had heard its salvos 
of artillery on its arrival at North Aa ; but since then, all 
had been dark and mournful again, hope and fear, in 
sickening alternation, distracting every breast. They knew 
that the wind was unfavourable, and, at the dawn of each 
day, every eye was turned wistfully to the vanes of the 
steeples. So long as the easterly breeze prevailed, they felt, 
as they anxiously stood on towers and house-tops that 
they must look in vain for the welcome ocean. Yet, while 



FAMINE 125 

thus patiently waiting, they were literally starving ; for 
even the misery endured at Harlem had not reached that 
depth and intensity of agony to which Leyden was now 
reduced. Bread, maltcake, horse-flesh, had entirely dis- 
appeared ; dogs, cats, rats, and other vermin were esteemed 
luxuries. A small number of cows, kept as long as possible, 
for their milk, still remained ; but a few were killed from 
day to day, and distributed in minute proportions, hardly 
sufficient to support life among the famishing population. 
Starving wretches swarmed daily around the shambles where 
these cattle were slaughtered, contending for any morsel 
which might fall, and lapping eagerly the blood as it ran 
along the pavement ; while the hides, chopped and boiled, 
were greedily devoured. 

"Women and children, all day long, were seen search- 
ing gutters and dung hills for morsels of food, which they 
disputed fiercely with the famishing dogs. The green 
leaves were stripped from the trees, every living herb was 
converted into human food, but these expedients could 
not avert starvation. The daily mortality was frightful, — 
infants starved to death on the maternal breasts, which 
famine had parched and withered ; mothers dropped dead 
in the streets, with their dead children in their arms. 

" In many a house the watchmen, in their rounds, found 
a whole family of corpses, father, mother and children, 
side by side ; for a disorder called the plague, naturally 
engendered of hardship and famine, now came, as if in kind- 
ness, to abridge the agony of the people. The pestilence 
stalked at noonday through the city, and the doomed in- 
habitants fell like grass beneath it scythe. From six 
thousand to eight thousand human beings sank before this 
scourge alone, yet the people resolutely held out — women 
and men mutually encouraging each other to resist the 



im MAYOR AND HERO 

entrance of their foreign foe — an evil more hoiTible than 
pest or famine.^ 

" The missives from Valdez, who saw more vividly than 
the besieged could do, the uncertainty of his own position, 
now poured daily into the city, the enemy becoming more 
prodigal of his vows, as he felt that the ocean might yet 
save the victims from his grasp. The inhabitants, in their 
ignorance, had gradually abandoned their hopes of relief, 
but they spurned the summons to surrender. Leyden was 
sublime in its despair. A few murmurs were, however, 
occasionally heard at the steadfastness of the magistrates, 
and a dead body was placed at the door of the burgomaster, 
as a silent witness against his inflexibility. A party of the 
more faint-hearted even assailed the heroic Adrian Van der 
Werf with threats and reproaches as he passed thi'ough 
the streets. 

"A crowd had gathered around him, as he reached a 
triangular place in the centre of the town, into which many 
of the principal streets emptied themselves, and upon one 
side of which stood the church of St. Pancras, with its high 
brick tower surmounted by two pointed turrets, and with 
two ancient lime trees at its entrance. There stood the 
burgomaster, a tall, haggard, imposing figure, with dark 
visacre, and a tranquil but commanding eye. He waved 
his broad-leaved felt hat for silence, and then exclaimed, in 
language which has been almost literally preserved, ' What 
would ye, my friends ? Why do ye murmur that we do 
not break our vows and surrender our city to the Spaniards ? 
— a fate more horrible than the agonv which she now en- 
dures. I tell you I have made an oath to hold this city, 

^ Mcndoza's estimate of the entire population as numbering only four- 
teen thousand before the siege is evidently erroneous. It was probably 
nearer fifty thousand. — Motley. 



THE ORIGIN OF THE UNIVERSITY 127 

and may God give me strength to keep my oath ! I can 
die but once ; whether by your hands, the enemy's, or by 
the hand of God. My own fate is indifferent to me, not so 
that of the city intrusted to my care. I know that we 
shall starve if not soon relieved ; but starvation is prefer- 
able to the dishonoured death which is the only alternative. 
Your menaces move me not ; my life is at your disposal ; 
here is my sword, plunge it into my breast, and divide my 
flesh among you. Take my body to appease your hunger, 
but expect no surrender, so long as I remain alive.' " 

Leyden was at last relieved by William of Orange, who 
from his sick-bed had arranged for the piercing of the 
dykes and letting in enough water to swim his ships and 
rout the Spaniards. 

Out of tribulation comes good. For their constancy 
and endurance in the siege the Prince offered the people 
of Leyden one of two benefits — exemption from taxes or 
the establishment of a University. They took the Uni- 
versity. 



CHAPTER IX 

HAARLEM 

Tulip culture — Early speculation — The song of the tulip — Dutch garden- 
ing new and old — A horticultural pilgrimage — The Haarlem dunes 
— Gardens without secrets — Zaandvoort — Throus^h Noord-Holland 
and its charms — The church of St. Bavo — Whitewash v. Mystery — 
— The true father of the Reformation — Printing paves the way — The 
Hout — Laocoon and his sons — The siege of Haarlem — Dutch forti- 
tude — The real Dutch courage — The implacable Alva — Broken 
promises — A tonic for Philip — The women of Haarlem — A pledge to 
mothers — The great organ — Three curious inhabitants — The Teyler 
Museum — Frans Hals — A king of abundance — Regent pieces — The 
secondary pictures in the Museum — Dirck Hals — Van der Heist — 
Adrian Brouwer — Nicolas Berchem — Ruisdael — The lost mastery — 
Echoes of the past. 

HAARLEM being the capital of the tuhp country, 
the time to visit it is the spring. To travel from 
Levden to Haarlem by rail in April is to pass thi'ough 
floods of colour, reaching their finest quality about Hillegom. 
The beds are too formal, too exactly parallel, to be beauti- 
ful, except as sheets of scarlet or yellow ; for careless beauty 
one must look to the heaps of blossoms piled up in the 
corners (later to be used on the beds as a fertiliser), which 
are always beautiful, and doubly so when reflected in a canal. 
From a balloon, in the flowering season, the tulip gardens 
must look like patchwork quilts. 

TuHp Sunday, which represents the height of the season 
(coiTesponding to Chestnut Sunday at Bushey Park) is about 

(128) " 



TULIPS 129 

the third Sunday in April. One should be in Holland then. 
It is no country for hot weather : it has no shade, the trains 
become unbearable, and the canals are very unpleasant. But 
in spring it is always fresh. 

Tulip cultivation is now a steady humdrum business, 
very different from the early days of the fashion for the 
flower, in the seventeenth century, when speculators lost 
their heads over bulbs as thoroughly as over South-Sea 
stock in the great Bubble period. Thousands of florins 
were given for a single bulb. The bulb, however, did not 
always change hands, often serving merely as a gambling 
basis ; it even may not have existed at all. Among genuine 
connoisseurs genuine sales would of course be made, and it 
is recorded that a " Semper Augustus " bulb was once 
bought for 13,000 florins. At last the Government inter- 
fered ; gambling was put down ; and " Semper Augustus " 
fell to fifty florins. 

It was to Haarlem, it will be remembered, that the fair 
Frisian travelled with Cornelius van Baerle's solitary flower 
in La Tidipe Noire, and won the prize of 100,000 florins 
offered for a blossom of pure nigritude by the Horticultural 
Society of Haarlem. Hence the addition of the Tulipa 
Nigra Rosa Baerleensis to the list of desirable bulbs. Dumas 
puts into the mouth of Cornelius a very charming song of 
the tulip : — 

Nous sommes les filles du fen secret, 
Du feu qui circule dans les veines de la terre ; 
Nous sommes les filles de I'aurore et de la rosea, 

Nous sommes les filles de I'air, 

Nous sommes les filles de I'eau ; 
Mais nous sommes avant tout les filles du ciel. 

The Dutch are now wholly practical. Their reputation 
as gardeners has become a commercial one, resting upon 
9 



130 THE FORMAL GARDEN 

the fortunate discovery that the tulip and the hyacinth 
tlu-ive in the sandy soil about Haarlem. For flowers as 
flowers they seem to me to care little or nothing. Their 
cottages have no pretty confusion of blossoms as in our 
villao^es. You never see the cottao;er at work amono; his 
roses ; once his necessai'v labours are over, he smokes 
and talks to his neighbours : to grow flowers for gesthetic 
reasons were too ornamental, too unproductive a hobby. 
vEsthetically the Dutch are dead, or are alive only in the 
matter of green paint, which they use with such charming 
efffect on their houses, their mills and their boats. What 
is pretty is old — as indeed is the case in our own country, 
if we except gardens. Modern Dutch architecture is 
without attraction, modern Delft porcelain a thing to cry 
over. 

If any one would know how an old formal Dutch garden 
looked, there is a model one at the back of the Ryks 
IMuseum in Amsterdam. But the art is no more practised. 
A few cii'cular beds in the lawn, surrounded by high wire 
netting — that is for the most part the modern notion of 
gardening. In an interesting report of a visit paid to the 
Netherlands and France in 1817 by the secretary of the 
Caledonia Horticultural Societv and some cono'enial com- 
panions, may be read excellent descriptions of old Dutch 
gardening, which even then was a thing of the past. Here 
is the account of a typical formal garden, near Utrecht : 
"The large divisions of the garden are made by tall and 
thick hedges of beech, hornbeam, and oak, variously shaped, 
having been tied to frames and thus trained, with the aid 
of the shears, to the desired form. The smaller divisions 
are made by hedges of yew and box, which in thickness and 
density resemble wails of brick. Grottoes and fountains 
are some of the principal ornaments. The gTottoes ai'e 



HAARLEM'S DUNES 131 

adorned with masses of calcareous stuff, corals and shells, 
some of them apparently from the East Indies, others 
natives of our own seas. The principal grotto is large, and 
studded with thousands of crystals and shells. We were 
told that its construction was the labour of twelve years. 
The fountains are of various devices, and though old, some 
of them were still capable of being put in action. Frogs 
and lizards placed at the edgings of the walks, and spouting 
water to the risk of passengers, were not quite so agreeable ; 
and other figures were still in worse taste. 

" There is a long berceau walk of beech, with numerous 
windows or openings in the leafy side wall, and many 
statues and busts, chiefly of Italian marble, some of them 
of exquisite workmanship. Several large urns and vases 
certainly do honour to the sculptor. The subjects of the 
bas-relief ornaments are the histories of Saul and David, 
and of Esther and Ahasuerus." 

I saw no old Dutch garden in Holland which seemed to 
me so attractive as that at Levens in Westmorland. 

It is important at Haarlem to take a drive over the 
dunes — the billowy, grassy sand hills which stretch between 
the city and the sea. If it is in April one can begin the 
drive by passing among every variety of tulip and hyacinth, 
through air made sweet and heavy by these flowers. Just 
outside Haarlem the road passes the tiniest deer park that 
ever I saw — with a great house, great trees, a lawn and a 
handful of deer all packed as close as they can be. Now 
and then one sees a stork's nest high on a pole before a 
house. 

On leaving the green and luxuriant flat country a 
climbing pave road winds in and out among the pines on 
the edge of the dunes ; past little villas, belonging chiefly 
to Amsterdam business men, each surrounded by a naked 



132 VILLA NAMES 

garden with the merest suggestion of a boundary. For the 
Dutch do not like walls or hedges. This level open land 
having no natural secrecy, it seems as if its inhabitants had 
decided there should be no artificial secrecy either. When 
they sit in their gardens they like to be seen. An English- 
man's first care when he plans a country estate is not to be 
overlooked ; a Dutchman would cut down every tree that 
intervened between his garden chair and the high road. 

Fun has often been made of the names which the 
Dutch merchants give to their country houses, but they 
seem to me often to be chosen with more thought than 
those of similar villas in our country. Here are a few 
specimens : Buiten Gedachten (Beyond Expectation), 0ns 
Genoegen (Our Contentment), Lust en Rust (Pleasure and 
Rest), Niet Zoo Quaalyk (Not so Bad), Myn Genegenhied 
is Voldaan (My Desire is Satisfied), Mijn Lust en Leven (My 
Pleasure and Life), Vriendschap en Gezelschap (Friendship 
and Sociabihty), Vreugde bij Vrede (Joy with Peace), 
Groot Genoeg (Large Enough), Buiten Zorg (Without 
Care). These names at any rate convey sentiments which 
we may take to express their owners' true feehngs in their 
owners' own language ; and as such I prefer them to the 
" Chatsworths " and " Belle-vues," " Cedars " and " Towers," 
with which the suburbs of London teem. In a small inland 
strejet in Brighton the other day I noticed a " Wave Crest ". 

The dunes extend for miles: an empty wilderness of 
sand with the grey North Sea beyond. From the high 
points one sees inland not only Haarlem, just below, but 
the domes and spires of Amsterdam beyond. 

One may return to Haarlem by way of Bloemendaal, 
a oreen valley with shady walks and a good hotel; or 
extend the drive to Haarlem's watering-place Zaandvoort, 
which otherwise can be gained by steam-tram, and where, 



DUTCH ENGLISH 133 

says the author of Through Noord- Holland^ " the billowing 
is strong and strengthening ". The same author tells us 
also that " the ponnies and asses have a separated standing- 
place, whilst severe stipulations warrant the bathers for 
trouble of the animals and their driver ". 

Of this book I ought perhaps to say more, for I am 
greatly indebted to it. Most of the larger towns of Hol- 
land have guides, and for the most part they are written 
in good English, albeit of Dutch extraction ; but Through 
Noo7'd- Holland is an agreeable exception in that it covers 
all the ground between Amsterdam and the Helder, and 
is constructed in a peculiar sport of Babel. In Dutch it is 
I have no doubt an ordinary guide-book ; in English it is 
something far more precious. The following extract from 
the preface to the second edition ought to be quoted before 
I borrow further from its pages : — 

Being completed with the necessary alterations and corrections I send 
it into the world for the second time. As it will be published besides in 
Dutch also in French and English, the aim of the edition will surely be 
favoured, and our poor misappreciated country that so often is regarded 
with contempt by our countrymen as well as by foreigners will soon be 
an attraction for tourists. For were not it those large extensive quiet 
heatheries those rustling green woods and those quiet low meadows 
which inspired our great painters to bring their fascinating landscapes on 
the cloth ? Had not that bloomy sky and that sunny mysterious light, 
those soft green meadows with their multi-coloured flowers, through 
which the river is streaming as a silver band, had not all this a quieting 
influence to the agitated mind of many of us, did not it give the quiet 
rest and did not it whisper to you ; here . . . here is it good ? And for 
this our country we want to be a reliable guide by the directions of which 
we can savely start. 

With Zaandvoort we may associate Dirck van Santvoort 
who painted the portrait of the curious girl — No. 2133 at 
the Ryks Museum — reproduced opposite page 236. Of 
the painter very little is known. He belongs to the great 



134 THE CHURCH REPELLENT 

period, flourishing in the middle of the seventeenth century 
— and that is all. But he had a very cunning hand and 
an interesting mind, as the few pictures to his name attest. 
In the same room at the Ryks Museum where the portrait 
hangs is a large group of ladies and gentlemen, all wearing 
some of the lace which he dearly loved to paint. And in 
one of the recesses of the Gallery of Honour is a quaint 
little lady from his delicate brush — No. 2131 — weJl worth 
study. 

Haarlem's great church, which is dedicated to St. Bavo, 
is one of the finest in Holland. All that is needed to make 
it perfect is an infusion of that warmth and colour which 
once it possessed but of which so few traces have been 
allowed to remain. The Dutch Protestants, as I remarked 
at Utrecht, have shown singular efficiency in denuding 
religion of its external graces and charm. There is no 
church so beautiful but they would reduce it to bleak and 
arid cheerlessness. Place even the cathedral of Chartres 
in a Dutch market-place, and it would be a whitewashed 
desert in a week, while little shops and houses would be 
built against its sacred walls. There is hardly a great 
church in Holland but has some secular domicile clinging 
like a barnacle to its sides. 

The attitude of the Dutch to their churches is in fact 
very much that of Quakers to their meeting-houses — even 
to the retention of hats. But whereas it is reasonable for 
a Quaker, having made for himself as plain a rectangular 
building as he can, to attach no sanctity to it, there is an 
incongruity when the same attitude is maintained amid 
beautiful Gothic arches. The result is that Dutch churches 
are more than chilling. In the simplest EngHsh village 
church one receives some impression of the friendliness of 
religion ; but in Holland — of course I speak as a stranger 



THE FORERUNNER OF ERASMUS 135 

and a foreigner — religion seems to be a cold if not a re- 
pellent thing. 

One result is that on looking back over one's travels 
through Holland it is almost impossible to disentangle in 
the memory one whitewashed church from another. They 
have a common monotony of internal aridity : one distin- 
guishes them, if at all, by some accidental possession — 
Gouda, for example, by its stained glass ; Haarlem by its 
organ, and the swinging ships ; Delft by the tomb of 
William the Silent; Utrecht by the startling absence of 
an entrance fee. 

At Haarlem, as it happens, one is peculiarly able to 
study cause and effect in this matter of Protestant bleak- 
ness, since there stands before the door of this wonderful 
church, once a Roman Catholic temple, drenched, I doubt 
not, in mystery and colour, a certain significant statue. 

To Erasmus of Rotterdam is generally given the parent- 
age of the Reformation. Whatever his motives, Erasmus 
stands as the forerunner of Luther. But Erasmus had his 
forerunner too, the discoverer of printing. For had not a 
means of rapidly multiplying and cheapening books been 
devised, the people, who were after all the back-bone of the 
Reformation, would never have had the opportunity of 
themselves reading the Bible — either the Vulgate or 
Erasmus's New Testament — and thus seeing for themselves 
how wide was the gulf fixed between Christ and the 
Christians. It was the discovery of this discrepancy which 
prepared them to stand by the reformers, and, by support- 
ing them and urging them on, assist them to victory. 

Stimulated by the desire to be level with Rome for his 
own early fetters, and desiring also an antagonist worthy 
of his satirical powers, Erasmus (or so I think) hit inde- 
pendently upon the need for a revised Bible. But Luther 



136 GUTENBURG OR COSTER ? 

to a large extent was the outcome of his times and of 
popular feeling. A spokesman was needed, and Luther 
stepped forward. The inventor of printing made the way 
possible ; Erasmus showed the way ; Luther took it. 

Now the honour of inventing printing lies between two 
claimants, Laurens Janszoon Coster, of Haarlem (the 
original of this statue) and Gutenburg of Mayence. The 
Dutch like to think that Coster was the man, and that his 
secret was sold to Gutenburg by his servant Faust. Be 
that as it may — and the weight of evidence is in favour of 
Gutenburg — it is interesting as one stands by the statue 
of Coster under the shadow of Haarlem's great church to 
think that this was perhaps the true parent of that great 
upheaval, the true pavior of the way. 

Whatever Coster's claim to priority may be, he certainly 
was a printer, and it is only fitting that Haarlem should 
possess so fine a library of early books and MSS. as it does. 

Another monument to Coster is to be seen in the Hout, 
a wood of which Haarlem is very proud. It has a fine 
avenue called the Spanjaards Laan, and is a very pleasant 
shady place in summer, hardly inferior to the Bosch at The 
Hague. " The delightful walks of the Hout," says the 
author of Through Noord-Holland^ " and the caressing song 
of the nightingale and other birds, do not only invite the 
Haarlemmers to it, but the citizens of the neighbouring 
towns as well." 

On the border of the wood is a pavilion which holds 
the collections of Colonial curiosities. In front of the 
pavilion (I quote again from Through Noord-Hollaiid^ 
which is invaluable), " stands a casting of Laskson and his 
sons to a knot, which has been manufactured in the last 
centuries before Christ. The original has been digged up 
at Rome in 1500." Shade of Lessing ! 



THE SIEGE 137 

The cannon-ball embedded in the wall of the church, 
which the sacristan shows with so much interest, recalls 
Haarlem's great siege in 1572 — a siege notable in the 
history of warfare for the courage and endurance of the 
townspeople against terrible odds. The story is worth 
telling in full, but I have not space and Motley is very 
accessible. But I sketch, with his assistance, its salient 
features. 

The attack began in mid-winter, when Haarlem Mere, 
a great lake in the east which has since been drained and 
poldered, was fi'ozen over. For some time a dense fog 
covered it, enabling loads of provisions and arms to be 
safely conveyed into the city. 

Don Frederic, the son of the Duke of Alva, who com- 
manded the Spanish, began with a success that augured 
well, a force of 4,000 men which marched from Leyden 
under De la Marck being completely routed. Among the 
captives taken by the Spaniards, says Motley, was " a 
gallant officer, Baptist Van Trier, for whom De la Marck 
in vain offered two thousand crowns and nineteen Spanish 
prisoners. The proposition was refused with contempt. 
Van Trier was^ hanged upon the gallows by one leg until 
he was dead, in return for which barbarity the nineteen 
Spaniards were immediately gibbeted by De la Marck. 
With this interchange of cruelties the siege may be said 
to have opened. 

" Don Frederic had stationed himself in a position op- 
posite to the gate of the Cross, which was not very strong, 
but fortified by a ravelin. Intending to make a very short 
siege of it, he established his batteries immediately, and 
on the 18th, 19th, and 20th December directed a furious 
cannonade against the Cross-gate, the St. John's gate, and 
the curtain between the two. Six hundred and eighty 



138 SAINTS AS MASONRY 

shots were discharged on the first, and nearly as many on 
each of the two succeeding days. The walls were much 
shattered, but men, women, and children worked night and 
day within the city, repairing the breaches as fast as made. 
They brought bags of sand, blocks of stone, cart-loads of 
earth from every quarter, and they stripped the churches 
of all their statues, which they threw by heaps into the 
gaps. They sought thus a more practical advantage from 
those sculptured saints than they could have gained by 
only imploring their interposition. The fact, however, 
excited horror among the besiegers. Men who were daily 
butchering their fellow-beings, and hanging their prisoners 
in cold blood, affected to shudder at the enormity of the 
offence thus exercised against graven images. 

" After three days' cannonade, the assault was ordered, 
Don Frederic only intending a rapid massacre, to crown 
his achievements at Zutphen and Naarden. The place, he 
thought, would fi\]\ in a week, and after another week of 
sacking, killing, and ravishing, he might sweep on to 
' pastures new ' until Holland was overwhelmed. Romero 
advanced to the breach, followed by a numerous storming 
party, but met with a resistance which astonished the 
Spaniards. The church bells rang the alarm throughout 
the city, and the whole population swarmed to the walls. 
The besiegers were encountered not only with sword and 
musket, but with every implement which the burghers' 
hands could find. Heavy stones, boiling oil, live coals, 
were hurled upon the heads of the soldiers ; hoops, smeared 
with pitch and set on fire, were dexterously tin-own upon 
their necks. Even Spanish courage and Spanish ferocity 
were obliged to shrink before the steady determination of 
a whole population animated by a single spirit. Romero 
lost an eye in the conflict, many officers were killed and 



GRIM HUMOUR 139 

wounded, and three or four hundred soldiers left dead in 
the breach, while only three or four of the townsmen lost 
their lives. The signal of recall was reluctantly given, and 
the Spaniards abandoned the assault. 

" Don Frederic was now aware that Haarlem would not 
fall at his feet at the first sound of his trumpet. It was 
obvious that a siege must precede the massacre. He gave 
orders, therefore, that the ravelin should be undermined, 
and doubted not that, with a few days' delay, the place 
would be in his hands." 

The Prince of Orange then made, from Sassenheim, 
another attempt to relieve the town, sending 2,000 men. 
But a fog falling, they lost their way and fell into the 
enemy's hands. " De Koning," says Motley, "second in 
command, was among the prisoners. The Spaniards cut 
off his head and threw it over the walls into the city, with 
this inscription : ' This is the head of Captain De Koning, 
who is on his way with reinforcements for the good city 
of Haarlem'. The citizens retorted with a practical jest, 
which was still more barbarous. They cut off the heads 
of eleven prisoners and put them into a barrel, which they 
threw into the Spanish camp. A label upon the barrel 
contained these words : ' Deliver these ten heads to Duke 
Alva in payment of his tenpenny tax, with one additional 
head for interest '." 

Day after day the attack continued and was repulsed. 
Meanwhile, unknown to the Spaniards, the besieged 
burghers were silently and swiftly building inside the 
ravelin a solid half-moon shaped battlement. On the 31st 
of December, the last day of 1572, the great assault was 
made. " The attack was unexpected, but the forty or fifty 
sentinels defended the walls while they sounded the alarm. 
The tocsin bells tolled, and the citizens, whose sleep was 



140 THE SPANIARDS REPULSED 

not apt to be heavy during that perilous winter, soon 
manned the ramparts again. The daylight came upon 
them while the fierce struggle was still at its height. The 
besieged, as before, defended themselves with musket and 
rapier, with melted pitch, with firebrands, with clubs and 
stones. Meantime, after morning prayers in the Spanish 
camp, the trumpet for a general assault was sounded. A 
tremendous onset w^as made upon the gate of the Cross, 
and the ravehn was carried at last. The Spaniards poured 
into this fort, so long the object of their attack, expecting 
instantly to sweep into the city with sword and fire. As 
they mounted its wall they became for the first time aware 
of the new and stronger fortification which had been 
secretly constructed on the inner side. The reason why 
the ravehn had been at last conceded was revealed. The 
half moon, whose existence they had not suspected, rose 
before them bristling with cannon. A sharp fire was 
instantly opened upon the besiegers, while at the same 
instant the ravelin, which the citizens had undermined, 
blew up with a severe explosion, carrying into the air all 
the soldiers who had j ust entered it so triumphantly. This 
was the turning point. The retreat was sounded, and the 
Spaniards fled to their camp, leaving at least three hundred 
dead beneath the walls. Thus was a second assault, made 
by an overwhelming force and led by the most accomplished 
generals of Spain, signally and gloriously repelled by the 
plain burghers of Haarlem." 

Cold and famine now began to assist the Spaniards, and 
the townsfolk were reduced to every privation. The 
Spaniards also suffered and Don Frederic wished to raise the 
siege. He suggested this step to his father, but Alva was 
made of sterner stuff*. He sent from Nymwegen a grim 
message : " ' Tell Don Frederic,' said Alva, ' that if he be 



IMPLACABLE ALVA 141 

not decided to continue the siege till the town be taken, 
I shall no longer consider him my son, whatever my opinion 
may formerly have been. Should he fall in the siege^ I will 
myself take the field to maintain it ; and when we have 
both perished, the Duchess, my wife, shall come from 
Spain to do the same.' Such language was unequivocal, 
and hostilities were resumed as fiercely as before. The 
besieged welcomed them with rapture, and, as usual, made 
daily the most desperate sallies. In one outbreak the 
Haarlemers, under cover of a thick fog, marched up to the 
enemy's chief battery, and attempted to spike the guns 
before his face. They were all slain at the cannon's mouth, 
whither patriotism, not vainglory, had led them, and lay 
dead around the battery, with their hammers and spikes 
in their hands. The same spirit was daily manifested. 
As the spring advanced, the kine went daily out of the 
gates to their peaceful pasture, notwithstanding all the 
turmoil within and around ; nor was it possible for the 
Spaniards to capture a single one of these creatures, with- 
out paying at least a dozen soldiers as its price. ' These 
citizens,' wrote Don Frederic, 'do as much as the best 
soldiers in the world could do.' " 

The whole story is too dreadful to be told ; but events 
proved the implacable old soldier to be right. Month 
after month passed, assault after assault was repulsed by 
the wretched but indomitable burghers ; but time was all 
on the side of the enemy. On July 12th, after the frustra- 
tion again and again of hopes of relief from the Prince 
of Orange, whose plans were doomed to failure on every 
occasion, the city surrendered on the promise of complete 
forgiveness by Don Frederic. 

The Don, however, was only a subordinate ; the Duke 
of Alva had other views. He quickly arrived on the 



142 THE CITY FALLS 

scene, and as quickly his presence made itself felt. " The 
garrison, during the siege, had been reduced from four 
thousand to eio-hteen hundred. Of these the Germans, 
six hundred in number, were, by Alva's order, dismissed, 
on a pledge to serve no more against the King. All 
the rest of the garrison were immediately butchered, 
with at least as many citizens. . . . Five executioners, 
with their attendants, were kept constantly at work ; 
and when at last they were exhausted with fatigue, or 
perhaps sickened with horror, three hundred wretches 
were tied two and two, back to back, and disowned in the 
Haarlem Lake. At last, after twenty- three hundi'ed human 
creatures had been murdered in cold blood, within a city 
where so many thousands had pre\4ously perished by 
violent or by lingering deaths ; the blasphemous farce of a 
pardon was enacted. Fifty-seven of the most prominent 
burghers of the place were, however, excepted from the act 
of amnesty, and taken into custody as security for the 
future good conduct of the other citizens. Of these 
hostages some were soon executed, some died in prison, 
and all would have been eventually sacrificed, had not the 
naval defeat of Bossu soon afterwards enabled the Prince 
of Orange to rescue the remaining prisoners. Ten thousand 
two hundi-ed and fifty-six shots had been discharged against 
the walk during the siege. Twelve thousand of the be- 
sieging army had died of wounds or disease during the 
seven months and two days between the investment and 
the surrender. In the earlier part of August, after the exe- 
cutions had been satisfactorily accomplished, Don Frederic 
made his triumphal entry, and the first chapter in the inva- 
sion of Holland was closed. Such was the memorable siege of 
Haarlem, an event in which we are called upon to wonder 
equally at human capacity to inflict and to endure misery. 



THE NOBLE KENAU 143 

" Philip was lying dangerously ill at the wood of Segovia, 
when the happy tidings of the reduction of Haarlem, with 
its accompanying butchery, arrived. The account of all 
this misery, minutely detailed to him by Alva, acted like 
magic. The blood of twenty-three hundred of his fellow- 
creatures — coldly murdered by his orders, in a single city 
— proved for the sanguinary monarch the elixir of life : he 
drank and was refreshed. ' The principal medicine which 
has cured his Majesty,^ wrote Secretary Cayas from Madrid 
to Alva, 'is the joy caused to him by the good news which 
you have communicated of the surrender of Haarlem.^ " 

I know nothing of the women of Haarlem to-day, but 
in the sixteenth century they were among the bravest 
and most efficient in the world, and it was largely their 
effiarts and example which enabled the city to hold out 
so long. Motley describes them as a corps of three 
hundred fighting women, "all females of respectable char- 
acter, armed with sword, musket, and dagger. Their chief, 
Kenau Hasselaer, was a widow of distinguished family, and 
unblemished reputation, about forty-seven years of age, 
who, at the head of her amazons, participated in many of 
the most fiercely contested actions of the siege, both within 
and without the walls. When such a spirit animated the 
maids and matrons of the city, it might be expected 
that the men would hardly surrender the place without 
a struggle." 

Haarlem still preserves the pretty custom of hanging- 
lace by the doors of houses which the stork is expected 
to visit or has just visited. Its origin was the humanity 
of the Spanish general, during this great siege, in receiving 
a deputation of matrons from the town and promising 
protection from his soldiery of all women in childbed. 
Every house was to go unharmed upon which a piece of 



144 THE GREAT ORGAN 

lace signifying a confinement was displayed. This was a 
promise with which the Duke of Alva seems not to have 
interfered. 

The author of Through Noord-Holland thus eloquently 
describes the effect of Haarlem's great organ — for long the 
finest in the world : " Vibrating rolls the tone through 
the church-building, followed by sweet melodies, running 
through each register of it ; now one hears the sound of 
trumpets or soft whistling tunes then again piano music or 
melancholical hautboy tunes chiming as well is deceivingly 
imitated." Free recitals are given on Tuesdays and Thurs- 
days from one to two. On other days the organist can be 
persuaded to play for a fee. Charles Lamb's friend Fell 
paid a ducat to the organist and half a crown to the blower, 
and heard as much as he wanted. He found the vox humana 
"the voice of a psalm-singing clerk". Other travellers have 
been more fortunate. Ireland tells us that when Handel 
played this organ the organist took him either for an angel 
or a devil. 

Among Haarlem's architectural attractions is the very 
interesting Meat Market, hard by the great church, one 
of the most agreeable pieces of floridity between the 
Middelburg stadhuis and the Leeuwarden chancellerie. 
There is also the fine Amsterdam Gate, on the road to 
Amsterdam. 

In the Teyler Museum, on the Spaarne, is a poor col- 
lection of modern oil paintings, some good modern water 
colours and a very fine collection of drawings by the 
masters, including several Rembrandts. In this room 
one may well plan to spend much time. One of the 
best Israels that I saw in Holland is a little water-colour 
interior that is hung here. I asked one of the attendants 
if they had anything by Matthew Maris, but he denied his 



FRANS HALS 145 

existence. James he knew, and William ; but there was 
no Matthew, " But he is your most distinguished artist," 
I said. It was great heresy and not to be tolerated. To 
the ordinary Dutchman art begins with Rembrandt and 
ends with Israels. This perhaps is why Matthew Maris 
has taken refuge in St. John's Wood. 

And now we come to Haarlem's chief glory— which is 
not Coster the printer, and not the church of Bavo the 
Saint, and not the tulip gardens, and not the florid and 
beautiful Meat Market ; but the painter Frans Hals, whose 
masterpieces hang in the Town Hall. 

I have called Hals the glory of Haarlem, yet he was 
only an adopted son, having been born in Antwerp about 
1580. But his parents were true Haarlemers, and Frans 
was a resident there before he reached man's estate. 

The painter's first marriage was not happy ; he was even 
publicly reprimanded for cruelty to his wife. In spite 
of the birth of his eldest child just thirty-four weeks 
earlier than the proprieties require, his second marriage, 
however, seems to have been fortunate. Some think 
that we see Mynheer and Myvrouw Hals in the picture 
— No. 1084 in the Ryks Museum — which is reproduced 
on the opposite page. If this jovial and roguish pair are 
really the painter and his wife, they were a merry couple. 
Children they had in abundance ; seven sons, five of whom 
were painters, and three daughters. Abundance indeed 
was Hals' special characteristic ; you see it in all his work 
— vigorous, careless abundance and power. He lived to be 
eighty-fiv^ or so. Mrs. Hals, after a married life of fifty 
years, continued to flourish, with the assistance of some 
relief from the town, for a considerable period. 

In the Haarlem Museum may be seen a picture of Hals' 
studio, painted by Berck Heyde, in 1652, containing portraits 



146 GUSTO 

of Hals himself, then about Jse vent j, and several of his old 
pupils — Wouvermans, Dirck Hals, his brother, four of his 
sons, the artist himself and others. Hals taught also Van 
der Heist, whose work at times comes nearest to his own, 
Verspronk, Terburg and Adrian van Ostade. 

To see the work of Hals at his best it is necessary to 
visit Holland, for we have but little here. The " Laughing 
Cavalier" in the Wallace Collection is perhaps his best 
picture in a public gallery in England. But the Haarlem 
Museum is a temple dedicated to his fame, and there you 
may revel in his lusty powers. 

The room in which his great groups hang is perhaps 
in effect more filled with faces than any in the world. 
Entering the door one is immediately beneath the bold 
and laughing scrutiny of a host of genial masterful arque- 
busiers, who make merry on the walls for all time. Such 
a riot of vivid portraiture never was ! Other men have 
painted single heads as well or better : but Hals stands 
alone in his gusto, his abundance, his sm-passing brio. It 
is a thousand pities that neither Lamb nor Hazlitt ever 
made the journey to Haarlem, because only they among 
our writers on art could have brought a commensurate 
gusto to the praise of his brush. 

I have reproduced one of the groups opposite page 150, 
but the result is no more than a memento of the original. 
It conveys, however, an impression of the skill in composi- 
tion by which the group is made not only a collection 
of portraits but a picture too. If such groups there 
must be, this is the way to paint them. The Dutch in the 
seventeenth century had a perfect mania for these com- 
memorative canvases, and there is not a stadhuis but has 
one or more. Rembrandt's " Night Watch " and Hals' 
Haarlem groups are the greatest ; but one is always sur- 



HAARLEM'S PAINTERS 147 

prised by the general level of excellence maintained, and 
now and then a lesser man such as Van der Heist climbs 
very nigh the rose, as in his " De Schuttersmaaltyd " in the 
"Night Watch" room in the Ryks Museum. The Cor- 
poration pieces of Jan van Ravesteyn in the Municipal 
Museum at The Hague are also exceedingly vivid ; while 
Jan de Bray's canvases at Haarlem, in direct competition 
with Hals', would be very good indeed in the absence of 
their rivals. 

Among other painters who can be studied here is our 
Utrecht friend Jan van Scorel, who has a large "Adam 
and Eve " in the passage and a famous " Baptism of Christ " ; 
Jan Verspronk of Haarlem, Hals' pupil, who has a very 
quiet and effective portrait (No. 210) and a fine rich group 
of the lady managers of an orphanage ; and Cornelius Cor- 
nellessen, also of Haarlem, painter of an excellent Corpora- 
tion Banquet. In the collection are also a very charming 
little Terburg (No. 194) and a fascinating unsigned portrait 
of William HI. as a pale and wistful boy. 

Haarlem was the mother or instructor of many painters. 
There is Dirck Hals, the brother of Frans, who was born 
there at the end of the sixteenth century, and painted 
richly coloured scenes of fashionable convivial life. He 
died at Haarlem ten years before Frans. A greater was 
Bartholomew van der Heist, who was Hals' most assimi- 
lative pupil. He was born at Haarlem about 1612, and is 
supposed to have studied also under Nicolas Elias. His 
finest large work is undoubtedly the "Banquet" to which 
I have just referred, but I always associate him with his 
portrait of Gerard Bicker, Landrichter of Muiden, that 
splendid tun of a man. No. 1140 in the Gallery of Honour 
at the Ryks Museum (see opposite page 86). One of his 
most beautiful paintings is a portrait of a woman in our 



148 BROUWER AND BERCHEM 

National Gallery, on a screen in the large Netherlands 
room : a picture which shows the influence of Elias not a 
little, as any one can see who recalls Nos. 897 and 899 in 
the Ryks Museum — two very beautiful portraits of a man 
and his wife. 

Haarlem and Oudenarde both claim the birth of Adrian 
Brouwer, a painter of Dutch topers. As to his life little 
is known. Tradition says that he drank and dissipated 
his earnings, while his work is evidence that he knew inn 
life with some particularity ; but his epitaph calls him " a 
man of great mind who rejected every splendour of the 
world and who despised gain and riches". Brouwer, who 
was born about 1606, was put by his mother, a dressmaker 
at Haarlem, into the studio of Frans Hals. Hals bullied 
him, as he bullied his first wife. Escaping to Amsterdam, 
Brouwer became a famous painter, his pictures being ac- 
quired, among others, by Rembrandt in his wealthy days, 
and by Rubens. He died at Antwerp when only thirty- 
three. We have nothing of his in the National Gallery, 
but he is represented at the Wallace Collection. 

At Haarlem w^as born also, in 1620, Nicolas Berchem, 
painter of charming scenes of broken arches and columns 
(which he certainly never saw in his own country), made 
human and domestic by the presence of people and cows, 
and suffused with gentle light. We have five of his pictm-es 
in the National Gallery. Berchem's real name was Van 
Haarlem. One day, however, when he was a pupil in Van 
Goyen's studio, his father pursued him for some fault. V^an 
Goyen, who was a kindly creature, as became the father-in- 
law of Jan Steen, called out to his other pupils — " Berg 
hem " (Hide him ! ) and the phrase stuck, and became his 
best-known name. Nicolas married a termagant, but never 
allowed her to impair his cheerful disposition. 



RUISDAEL 149 

Haarlem was the birthplace also of Jacob van Ruis- 
dael, gi*eatest of Dutch landscape painters. He was born 
about 1620. His idea was to be a doctor, but Nicolas 
Berchem induced him to try painting, and we cannot be 
too thankful for the change. His landscapes have a deep 
and grave beauty : the clouds really seem to be floating 
across the sky; the water can almost be heard tumbling 
over the stones. Ruisdael did not find his typical scenery 
in his native land : he travelled in Germany and Italy, 
and possibly in Norway; but whenever he painted a 
strictly Dutch scene he excelled. He died at Haarlem in 
1682 ; and one of his most exquisite pictures hangs in the 
Museum. I do not give any reproductions of Ruisdael 
because his work loses so much in the process. At the 
National Gallery and at the Wallace Collection he is well 
represented . 

Walking up and down beneath the laughing confidence 

of these many bold faces in the great Hals' room at 

Haarlem I found myself repeating Longfellow's lines : — 

He has singed the beard of the King of Spain, 
And carried away the Dean of Jaen 
And sold him in Algiers. 

Surely the hero, Simon Danz, was something such a man 
as Hals painted. How does the ballad run .? — 

A DUTCH PICTURE. 

Simon Danz has come home again, 
From cruising about with his buccaneers ; 

He has singed the beard of the King of Spain, 

And carried away the Dean of Jaen 
And sold him in Algiers. 

In his house by the Maese, with its roof of tiles 

And weathercocks flying aloft in air, 
There are silver tankards of antique styles. 
Plunder of convent and castle, and piles 

Of* carpets rich and rare. 



150 SIMON DANZ 

In his tulip garden there by the town 

Overlooking the sluggish stream, 
With his Moorish cap and dressing-gown 
The old sea-captain, hale and brown, 
Walks in a waking dream. 

A smile in his gray mustachio lurks 

Whenever he thinks of the King of Spain. 
And the listed tulips look like Turks, 
And the silent gardener as he works 
Is changed to the Dean of Jaen. 

The windmills on the outermost 

Verge of the landscape in the haze. 
To him are towers on the Spanish coast, 
With whisker'd sentinels at their post, 
Though this is the river Maese. 

But when the winter rains begin, 

He sits and smokes by the blazing brands, 
And old sea- faring men come in, 
Goat-bearded, gray, and with double chin, 
And rings upon their hands. 

They sit there in the shadow and shine 

Of the flickering fire of the winter night. 
Figures in colour and design 
Like those by Rembrandt of the Rhine, 
Half darkness and half Hght. 

And they talk of their ventures lost or won, 
And their talk is ever and ever the same, 
While they drink the red wine of Tarragon, 
From the cellars of some Spanish Don, 
Or convent set on flame. 

Restless at times, with heavy strides 

He paces his parlour to and fro ; 
He is like a ship that at anchor rides, 
And swings with the rising and falling tides 
^ And tugs at her anchor-tow. 




< -5 



THE OLD AND THE NEW 151 

Voices mysterious far and near, 

Sound of the wind and sound of the sea, 
Are calhng and whispering in his ear, 
" Simon Danz ! Why stayest thou here ? 

Come forth and follow me ! " 

So he thinks he shall take to the sea again, 
For one more cruise with his buccaneers ; 

To singe the beard of the King of Spain, 

And capture another Dean of Jaen 
And sell him in Algiers. 

One thought leads to another. It is impossible also to 
remain long in the great Hals' room of the Museum with- 
out meditating a little upon the difference between these 
arquebusiers and the Dutch of the present day. Passing 
among these people, once so mighty and ambitious, so 
great in government and colonisation, in seamanship and 
painting, and seeing them now so material and ^elf-centred, 
so bound within their own small limits, so careless of 
literature and art, so intent upon the profits of the day 
and the pleasures of next Sunday, one has a vision of what 
perhaps may be our own lot. For the Dutch are very near 
us in kin, and once were nigh as great as we have been. 
Are we, in our day of decadence, to shrivel thus ? " There 
but for the grace of God goes England" — is that a reason- 
able utterance ? 

One sees the difference concretely as one passes from 
these many Corporation and Regent pieces in the galleries 
of Holland to the living Dutchmen of the streets. I saw 
it particularly at Haarlem on a streaming wet day, after 
hurrying from the Museum to the Cafe Brinkmann through 
some inches of water. At a table opposite, sipping their 
coffee, were two men strikingly like two of Frans Hals' 
arquebusiers. Yet how unlike. For the air of mas- 
terful recklessness had gone, that good-humoured glint 



152 AN ECHO 

of power in the eye was no more. Hals had painted 
conquerors, or at any rate warriors for country; these 
coffee drinkers were meditating profit and loss. Where 
once was authority is now calculation. 

I quote a little poem by Mr. Van Lennep of Zeist, 
near Utrecht, which shows that the Dutch, whatever their 
present condition, have not forgotten : — 

The shell, when put to child-like ears, 
Yet murmurs of its bygone years, 

In echoes of the sea ; 
The Dutch-born youngster likes the sound, 
And ponders o'er its mystic ground 

And wondrous memory. 

Thus, in Dutch hearts, an echo dwells, 
Which, like the ever-mindful shells, 

Yet murmurs of the sea : 
That sea, of ours in times of yore. 
And, when De Ruyter went before, 

Our road to victory. 



CHAPTER X 

AMSTERDAM 

The Venice of the North — The beauty of gravity — No place for George 
Dyer — The Keizersgracht — Kalverstraat and Warmoes Straat — The 
Ghetto — Pile-driving — Erasmus's sarcasm — The new Bourse — ^Learn- 
ing the city — Tramway perplexities — The unnecessary guide — 
The Royal Palace — The New Church — Stained glass — The Old 
Church — The five carpets — Wedding customs — Dutch wives to- 
day and in the past — The Begijnenhof — The new religion and the 
old — The Burgerweesmeisjes — The Eight Orange Blossoms — Dutch 
music halls — A Dutch Hamlet — The fish market — Rembrandt's 
grave — A nation of shopkeepers — Max Havelaar—Mr. Drystubble's 
device — Lothario and Betsy — The English in Holland and the Dutch 
in England — Athleticism — A people on skates — The chaperon's 
perplexity — Love on the level. 

AMSTERDAM is notable for two possessions above 
others : its old canals and its old pictures. Truly 
has it been called the Venice of the North ; but very 
different is its sombre quietude from the sunny Italian 
city among the waters. There is a beauty of gaiety and 
a beauty of gravity ; and Amsterdam in its older parts — 
on the Keizersgracht and the Heerengracht — has the beauty 
of gravity. In Venice the canal is of course also the 
street : gondolas and barcas are continually gliding hither 
and thither ; but in the Keizersgracht and the Heerengracht 
the water is little used. One day, however, I watched a 
costermonger steering a boat-load of flowers under a bridge, 
and no words of mine can describe the loveliness of their 

(153) 



154 THE KEIZERSGRACHT'S SECRET 

reflection. I remember the incident particularly because 
flowers are not much carried in Holland, and it is very 
pleasant to have this impression of them — this note of 
happy gaiety in so dark a setting. 

An unprotected roadway runs on either side of the 
water, which makes the houses beside these canals no 
place for Charles Lamb's friend, George Dyer, to visit in. 
Accidents are notnumerous, but a company exists in Amster- 
dam whose business it is to rescue such odd dippers as 
horses and carriages by means of elaborate machinery 
devised for the purpose. Only travellers born under a 
luckier star than I are privileged to witness such sport. 

In the main Amsterdam is a city of trade, of hurrying 
business men, of ceaseless clanging tramcars and crowded 
streets ; but on the Keizersgracht and the Heerengracht 
you are always certain to find the old essential Dutch 
gravity and peace. No tide moves the sullen waters of 
these canals, which are lined with trees that in spring form 
before the narrow, dark, discreet houses the most delicate 
green tracery imaginable ; and in summer screen them 
altogether. These houses are for the most part black 
and brown, with white window frames, and they rise to a 
great height, culminating in that curious stepped gable 
(with a crane and pulley in it) which is, to many eyes, the 
symbol of the city. I know no houses that so keep their 
secrets. In every one, I doubt not, is furniture worthy 
of the exterior: old paintings of Dutch gentlemen and 
gentlewomen, a landscape or two, a girl with a lute and a 
few tavern scenes ; old silver windmills ; and plate upon 
plate of serene blue Delft. (You may see what I mean 
in the Suasso rooms at the Stadelijks Museum.) I have 
walked and idled in the Keizersgracht at all times of the 
day, but have never seen any real signs of life. Mats have 




ST. NICOLAS CHURCH, AJvISTERDAM 



OWEN FELTHAM 155 

been banged on its doorsteps by clean Dutch maidservants 
armed with wicker beaters ; milk has been brought in huge 
cans of brass and copper shining like the sun ; but of its 
life proper the gracht has given no sign. Its true life is 
houseridden, behind those spotless and very beautiful lace 
curtains, and there it remains. 

One of the wittiest of the old writers on Holland (of 
whom I said something in the second chapter), Owen Felt- 
ham the moralist, describes in his Brief Character of the 
Low Countries an Amsterdam house of the middle of the 
seventeenth century. Thus : — 

When you are entered the house, the first thing you encounter is a 
Looking-glasse. No question but a true Embleme of politick hospitality ; 
for though it reflect yourself in your own figure, 'tis yet no longer than 
while you are there before it. When you are gone once, it flatters the 
next commer, without the least remembrance that you ere were there. 

The next are the vessels of the house marshalled about the room like 
watchmen. All as neat as if you were in a Citizen's Wife's Cabinet ; for 
unless it be themselves, they let none of God's creatures lose any thing of 
their native beauty. 

Their houses, especially in their Cities, are the best eye-beauties of 
their Country. For cost and sight they far exceed our English, but they 
want their magnificence. Their lining is yet more rich than their out- 
side ; not in hangings, but pictures, which even the poorest are there 
furnisht with. Not a cobler but has his toyes for ornament. Were the 
knacks of all their houses set together, there would not be such another 
Bartholmew-Faite in Europe. . . . 

Their beds are no other than land-cabines, high enough to need a 
ladder or stairs. Up once, you are walled in with Wainscot, and that is 
good discretion to avoid the trouble of making your will every night ; for 
once falling out else would break your neck perfectly. But if you die in 
it, this comfort you shall leave your friends, that you dy'd in clean linnen. 

Whatsoever their estates be, their houses must be fair. Therefore 
from Amsterdam they have banisht seacoale, lest it soyl their buildings, 
of which the statelier sort are sometimes sententious, and in the front 
carry some conceit of the Owner. As to give you a taste in these. 
Christus Adjutor Mens ; 
\ Hoc abdicato Perenne Quero ; 
Hie Medio tuitus Itur, 



156 REFLECTIONS 

Every door seems studded with Diamonds. The nails and hinges 
hold a constant brightnesse, as if rust there was not a quality incident to 
Iron, Their houses they keep cleaner than their bodies ; their bodies 
than their souls. Goe to one, you shall find the Andirons shut up in 
net-work. At a second, the Warming-pan muffled in Italian Cutworke. 
At a third the Sconce clad in Cambrick. 

The absence of any lively traffic on the canals, as in Venice, 
has this compensation, that the surface is left untroubled 
the more minutely to mirror the houses and trees, and, at 
night, the tramcai-s on the bridges. The lights of these 
cars form the most vivid reflections that I can recollect. 
But the quiet reproduction of the stately black facades is 
the more beautiful thing. An added dignity and repose 
are noticeable. I said just now that one desired to learn 
the secret of the calm life of these ancient gi'achts. But 
the secret of the actual houses of fact is as nothing com- 
pared with the secret of those other houses, more sombre, 
more mysterious, more reserved, that one sees in the water. 
To peneti'ate their impressive doors were an achievement, a 
distinction, indeed ! With such a purpose suicide would 
lose half its terroi-s. 

For the greatest contrast to these black canals, you must 
seek the Kalverstraat and Warmoes Straat. Kalverstraat, 
running south from the Dam, is by day filled with shoppers 
and by night with gossipei-s. No street in the world can 
be more consistently busy. Damrak is of course always a 
scene of hfe, but Damrak is a thoroughfare — its population 
moving continually either to or from the station. But 
those who use the Kalverstraat may be said almost to live 
in it. To be there is an end in itself. Warmoes Straat, 
parallel with Damrak on the other side of the Boui'se, be- 
hind the Bible Hotel, is famous for its gigantic i-estaurant 
— the hugest in Europe, I believe — the Ki-asnapolsky, a 
palace of bewildering mirrors, and for concert halls and 



THE GHETTO 157 

other accessories of the gayer hfe. But this book is no 
place in which to enlarge upon the natural history of 
Warmoes Straat and its southern continuation, the Nes. 

For the principal cafes, as distinguished from restaurants, 
you must seek the Rembrandt's Plein, in the midst of 
which stands the master's statue. The pavement of this 
plein on Sunday evening in summer is almost impassable 
for the tables and chairs that spread over it and the crowds 
overflowing from Kalverstraat. 

But there is still to be mentioned a district of Amster- 
dam which from the evening of Friday until the evening of 
Saturday is more populous even than Kalverstraat. This 
is tJ^e Jews' quarter, which has, I should imagine, more 
parents and children to the square foot than any residential 
region in Europe. I struggled through it at sundown one 
fine Saturday — to say I walked through it would be too 
misleading — and the impression I gathered of seething 
vivacity is still with me. These people surely will inherit 
the earth. 

Spinoza was a child of this Ghetto : his birthplace at 
41 Waterloo Plein is still shown ; and Rembrandt lived at 
No. 4 Jodenbree Straat for sixteen years. 

A large number of the Amsterdam Jews are diamond 
cutters and polishers. You may see in certain cafes dealers 
in these stones turning over priceless little heaps of them 
with the long little finger-nail which they preserve as a 
scoop. 

Amsterdam may be a city builded on the sand ; but none 
the less will it endure. Indeed the sand saves it ; for it is 
in the sand that the wooden piles on which every house 
rests find their footing, squelching through the black mud 
to this comparative solidity. Some of the piles are as long- 
as 52 ft., and watching them being driven in, it is impossible 



158 PILE-DRIVING 

to believe that stability can ever be attained, every blow of 
the monkey accounting for so very many inches. When one 
watches pile-di-iving in England it is difficult to see the 
effect of each blow : but during the five or fewer minutes 
that I spent one day on Damrak observing the preparation 
for the foundations of a new house, the pile must have 
gone in nearly a foot each time, and it was very near the 
end of its journey too. In course of years the black brackish 
mud petrifies not only the piles but the wooden girders 
that are laid upon therri. 

Pile- driving on an extensive scale can be a very picturesque 
sight. Breitner has painted several pile-driving scenes, one 
of which hangs in the Stadelijks Museum at Amsterdam. 

Statistics are always impressive. I have seen somewhere 
the number of piles which support the new Bourse and 
the Central Station ; but I cannot now find them. The 
Royal Palace stands on 13,659. Erasmus of Rotterdam 
made merry quite in the manner of an English humorist 
over Amsterdam's wooden foundations. He twitted the 
inhabitants with living on the tops of trees, like rooks. 
But as I lay awake from daybreak to a civilised hour for 
two mornings in the Hotel Weimar at Rotterdam — pre- 
vented from sleeping by the pile-driving for the hotel 
extension — I thought of the apologue of the pot and the 
kettle. 

I referred just now to the new Bourse. When I was at 
Amsterdam in 1897, the water beside Damrak extended 
much farther towards the Dam than it does now. Where 
now is the new Bourse was then shipping. But the 
new Bourse looks stable enough to-day. As to its archi- 
tectural charms, opinions differ. My own feeling is that 
it is not a style that will wear well. For a permanent 
public building something more classic is probably desir- 




THE CAT'S DAN'CIXCx LESSON 

JAX STEEX 
F7-0771 the picture in the Ryks Mzisetcm 



^S' 1f^ 



A ^^ 



THE DAM 159 

able ; and at Amsterdam, that city of sombre colouring, 
I would have had darker hues than the red and yellow that 
have been employed. The site of the old Bourse is now an 
open space. 

It is stated that the kindly custom of allowing the children 
of Amsterdam the run of the Bourse as a playground for a 
week every year is some compensation for the suppression 
of the Kermis, but another story makes the sanction a 
perpetual reward for an heroic deed against the Spaniards 
performed by a child in 1622. 

My advice to any one visiting Amsterdam is first to 
study a map of the city — Baedeker gives a very useful one 
— and thus to begin with a general idea of the lie of the 
land and the w^ater. With this knowledge, and the assist- 
ance of the trams, it should not appear a very bewildering 
place. The Dam is its heart : a fact the acquisition of which 
will help very sensibly. All roads in Amsterdam lead to the 
Dam, and all lead from it. The Dam gives the city its 
name — Amstel dam, the dam which stops the river Amstel 
on its course to the Zuyder Zee. It also gives English and 
American visitors opportunities for facetiousness which I 
tingle to recall. Every tram sooner or later reaches the 
Dam : that is another simplifying piece of information. 
The course of each tram may not be very easily acquired, 
but with a common destination like this you cannot be 
carried very far wrong. 

One soon learns that the trams stop only at fixed points, 
and waits accordingly. The next lesson, which is not quite 
so simple, is that some of these points belong exclusively to 
trams going one way and some exclusively to trams going 
the other. If there is one thing calculated to reduce a 
perplexed foreigner in Amsterdam to rage and despair, it 
is, after a tiring day among pictures, to hail a half empty 



160 A SHORT WAY WITH GUIDES 

tram at a fixed point, with Tram-haUe written on it, and 
be treated to a pitying smile from the driver as it rushes 
by. Upon such mortifications is education based ; for one 
then looks again more narrowly at the sign and sees that 
underneath it is a little arrow pointing in the opposite 
direction to which one wished to go. One then walks on to 
the next point, at which the arrow will be pointing home- 
wards, and waits there. Sometimes — O happy moment — 
a double arrow is found, facing both ways. 

It is on the Dam that guides will come and pester you. 
The guide carries an umbrella and offers to show Amster- 
dam in such a way as to save you much money. He is 
quite useless, and the quickest means of getting free is to 
say that you have come to the city for no other purpose 
than to pay extravagantly for everything. So stupend- 
ous an idea checks even his importunity for a moment, and 
while he still reels you can escape. The guides outside the 
Ryks Museum who ofl'er to point out the beauties of the 
pictures are less persistent. It would seem as if they were 
aware of the unsoundness of their case. There is no 
need to reply to these at all. 

On the Dam also is the Royal Palace, which once was 
the stadhuis, but in 1808 (when Amsterdam was the third 
city of the French Empire) was offered to Louis Napoleon 
for a residence. Queen Wilhelmina occasionally stays there, 
but The Hague holds her true home. The apartments are 
florid and not very interesting ; but if the ascent of the 
tower is permitted one should certainly make it. It is 
interesting to have Amsterdam at one's feet. Only thus 
can its pecuhar position and shape be understood : its old 
part an almost perfect semicircle, with canal-arcs within 
arcs, and its northern shore washed by the Y. 

Also on the Dam is the New Church, which is to be seen 



THE KOSTER 161 

more for the tomb of De Ruyter than for any architectural 
graces. The old sea dog, whose dark and determined 
features confront one in BoFs canvases a^ain and again in 
Holland, reposes in full dress on a cannon amid symbols of 
his victories. Close by, in the Royal Palace, are some of 
the flags which he wrested from the English. Other 
admirals also lie there, the Dutch naval commander never 
having wanted for honour in his own country. 

The New Church, where the monarchs of Holland are 
crowned, has a very large new stained-glass window repre- 
senting the coronation of Queen Wilhemina — one of the 
most satisfying new windows that I know, but quite lack- 
ing in any religious suggestion. That poet who considered 
a church the best retreat, because it is good to contemplate 
God through stained glass, would have fared badly in 
Holland. 

The New Church is new only by comparison with the 
Old. It was built in 1410, rebuilt in 1452 and 1645. 
Amsterdam's Old Church, on the other side of Warmoes 
Straat, dates from 1300. The visitor to the New Church 
is handed a brief historical leaflet in exchange for his 
twenty-five cents, and is left to his own devices ; but the 
Old Church has a koster who takes a pride in showing his 
lions and who deprecates gifts of money. An elderly, clean- 
shaved man with a humorous mouth, he might be taken 
for Holland's leading comedian. Instead, he displays 
ecclesiastical treasures, of which in 1904 there were fewer 
than usual, two of the three fine old windows representing 
the life of the Vu-gin being under repair behind a screen. 
The tombs and monuments are not interesting — admirals 
of the second rank and such small fry. 

It is in the Old Church that most of the weddings of 
Amsterdam arg celebrated. Thursday is the day, for then. 



162 WEDDINGS 

the fees are practically nothing ; on other days to be 
married is an expense. The koster deplores the modem 
materialism which leads so many young men to be satisfied 
with the civil function ; but the little enclosure, like a small 
arena, in which the church blesses unions, had to me a 
hardly less business-like appearance than a registry office. 
The comedian ovei-flows with details. For the covering 
of the floor, he explains, there are five distinct carpets, 
ranging in price from five guelders to twenty-five for the 
hire, according to the means or ostentation of the party. 
Thursdays are no holiday for the church officials, one 
couple being hardly united before the horses of the next 
are pawing the paving stones at the door. 

I saw on one Thursday three bridal parties in as many 
minutes. The happy bride sat on the back seat of the 
brougham, immediately before her being two miiTors in 
the shape of a heart supporting a bouquet of white flowers. 
Contemplating this simple imagery she rattles to the 
ecclesiastical arena and the sanctities of the five, ten, 
fifteen, twenty or twenty-five guelder carpet. Alter, a 
banquet and jokes. 

This is the second banquet, for when the precise pre- 
liminaries of a Dutch engagement are settled a betrothal 
feast is held. Friends ai'e bidden to the wedding by the 
receipt of a box of sweets and a bottle of wine known 
as " Bride's tears ". For the wedding day itself there is a 
particular brand of wine which contains little grains of 
gold. The Dutch also have special cake and wine for the 
celebration of births. 

The position of the Dutch wife is now very much that 
of the wife in England ; but in Holland's gieat days 
she ruled. Something of her quality is to be seen in the 
stories of Barneveldt's widow and Grotius's wife, and the 



WIVES OF THE PAST 163 

heroism and address of the widow Kenau Hasselaer during 
the siege of Haarlem . .Davies has an interesting page or two 
on this subject : " To be master of his own house is an idea 
which seems never to have occurred to the mind of a genuine 
Dutchman ; nor did he often commence any undertaking, 
whether pubhc or private, without first consulting the 
partner of his cares ; and it is even said, that some of the 
statesmen most distinguished for their influence in the 
affairs of their own country and Europe in general, were 
accustomed to receive instructions at home to which they 
ventured not to go counter. But the dominion of these 
lordly dames, ail despotic though it were, was ever exerted 
for the benefit of those who obeyed. It was the earnest 
and undaunted spirit of their women, which encouraged 
the Dutch to dare, and their calm fortitude to endure, the 
toils, privations, and sufferings of the first years of the war 
of independence against Spain ; it was their activity and 
thrift in the management of their private incomes, that 
supplied them with the means of defraying an amount of 
national expenditure wholly unexampled in history ; and 
to their influence is to be ascribed above all, the decorum 
of manners, and the purity of morals, for which the society 
of Holland has at all times been remarkable. But though 
they preserved their virtue and modesty uncontaminated 
amid the general corruption, they were no longer able to 
maintain their sway. The habit which the Dutch youth 
had acquired, among other foreign customs, of seeking 
amusement abroad, rendered them less dependent for happi- 
ness on the comforts of a married life ; while, accustomed 
to the more dazzling allurements of the women of France 
and Italy, they were apt to overlook or despise the quiet 
and unobtrusive beauties of those of their own country. 
Whether they did not better consult their own dignity in 



164 A HOME OF PEACE 

emancipating themselves from this subjection may be 
a question ; but the fact, that the decline of the re- 
public and of the female sex went hand in hand, is 
indubitable." 

To return to Amsterdam's sights, the church which I 
remember with most pleasure is the English Reformed 
Church, which many visitors never succeed in finding at 
all, but to which I was taken by a Dutch lady who knew 
my tastes. You seek the Spui, where the electric trams 
start for Haarlem, and enter a very small doorway on the 
north side. It seems to lead to a private house, but instead 
you find yourself in a very beautiful little enclosure of old 
and quaint buildings, exquisitely kept, each with a screen 
of pollarded chestnuts before it ; in the midst of which is a 
toy white church with a gay little spire that might have 
wandered out of a fairy tale. The enclosure is called The 
Begijnenhof, or Court of the Begijnen, a little sisterhood 
named after St. Begga, daughter of Pipinus, Duke of 
Brabant, — a saint who lived at the end of the seventh 
century and whose day in the Roman Catholic Calendar is 
December 17. 

The church was originally the church of these nuns, but 
when the old religion was overthrown in Amsterdam, in 
1578, it was taken from them, although they were allowed 

as happily they still are — to retain possession of the 

court around it. 

In 1607 the church passed into the possession of a settle- 
ment of Scotch weavers who had been in^dted to Amsterdam 
by the merchants, and who had made it a condition of ac- 
ceptance that they should have a conventicle of their own. 
It is now a resort of English church-going visitors on 
Sunday. 

Most of Holland's churches— as of England's— once be- 



BLACK AND RED 165 

longed to Rome, and it is impossible to forget their ancient 
ownership ; but I remember no other case where the new 
religion is practised, as in the Begijnenhof, in the heart 
of the enemy's camp. In the very midst of the homes of 
the quiet sweet Begijnen sisters are the voices of the usurp- 
ing Reformers heard in prayer and praise. 

One little concession, however, was made by the appropri- 
ators of the chapel. Until as recently as 1865 a special part 
of the building the original Roman consecration of which 
had not been nullified was retained by the sisterhood in 
which to bury their dead. The ceremony was very im- 
pressive. Twelve of the nuns carried their dead com- 
panion three times round the court before entering the 
church. But all that is over, and now they must seek 
burial elsewhere, without their borders. 

One may leave the Begijnenhof by the other passage 
into Kalverstraat, and walking up that busy street towards 
the Dam, turn down the St. Lucien Steeg, on the left, to 
another of Amsterdam's homes of ancient peace — the muni- 
cipal orphanage, which was once the Convent of St. Lucien. 
The Dutch are exceedingly kind to their poor, and the 
orphanages and almshouses (Oudemannen and Oudevrouwen 
houses as they are called) are very numerous. The Muni- 
cipal Orphanage of Amsterdam is among the most interest- 
ing ; and it is to this refuge that the girls and boys belong 
whom one sees so often in the streets of the city in curious 
parti-coloured costume — red and black vertically divided. 
The Amsterdamsche burgerweesmeisjes, as the girls are 
called, make in procession a very pretty and impressive sight 
— with their white tippets and caps above their dresses of 
black and red. 

This reminds me that one of the most agreeable perfor- 
mances that I saw in any of the Dutch music halls (which 



166 HALLS OF VARIETY 

are not good, and which are rendered very tedious to EngKsh 
people by reason of the interminable interval called the 
Pause in the middle of the evening), was a series of folk 
songs and dances by eight girls known as the Orange 
Blossoms, dressed in different traditional costumes of the 
north and south — Friesland, Marken, and Zeeland. They 
were quite charming. They sang and danced very prettily, 
as housewives, as fisher girls, but particularly as i^mster- 
darasche burgerweesmeisjes. 

In the music halls both at Amsterdam and Rotterdam I 
listened to comic singers inexorably endowed with too many 
songs apiece ; but I saw also some of those amazing feats 
of acrobatic skill and exhibitions of clean strength which 
alone should cause people to encourage these places of 
entertainment, where the standard of excellence in such 
displays is now so high. I did not go to the theatre in 
Holland. My Dutch was too elementary for that. My 
predecessor Ireland, however, did so, and saw an amusing 
piece of literalness introduced into Hamlet. In the im- 
passioned scene, he tells us, between the prince and his 
mother, " when the hero starts at the imagined appearance 
of his father, his wig, by means of a concealed spring, 
jumped from ' the seat of his distracted brain/ and left 
poor Hamlet as bare as a Dutch v/illow in winter." 

The Oude Kerk has very beautiful bells, but Amsterdam 
is no place in which to hear such sweet sounds. The 
little towns for bells. Near the church is the New Market, 
with the very charming old weigh-house with little ex- 
tinguisher spires called the 5t. Anthonysveeg. Here the 
fish market is held ; and the fish market of a city like 
Amsterdam should certainly be visited. The Old Market 
is on the western side of the Dam, under the western 
church. "It is said," remarks the author of Through 



NATIONS OF SHOPKEEPERS 167 

Noord-Holland, " that Rembrandt has been buried in this 
church, though his grave has never been found." 

Napoleon's sarcasm upon the English — that they were 
a nation of shopkeepers — never seemed to me very shrewd : 
but in Holland one realises that if any nation is to be thus 
signally stigmatised it is not the English. As a matter of 
fact we are very indifferent shopkeepers. We lack several 
of the needful qualities : we lack foresight, the sense of 
order and organised industry, and the strength of mind 
to resist the temptations following upon a great coup. A 
nation of shopkeepers would not go back on the shop so 
completely as we do. No nation that is essentially snob- 
bish can be accurately summed up as a nation of shop- 
keepers. The French for all their distracting gifts of art 
and mockery are better shopkeepers than we, largely be-, 
cause they are more sensibly contented. They take short 
views and liye each day more fully. But the Dutch are 
better still ; the Dutch are truly a nation of shopkeepers. 

If one would see the Amsterdam merchant as the satirist 
sees him, the locus classicus is Multa,tuli's famous novel 
Max Havclaar, where he stands delightfully nude in the 
person of Mr. Drystubble, head of the firm of Last and 
Co., Coffee-brokers, No. 37 Laurier Canal. Max Havelaar 
was published in the early sixties to draw attention to 
certain scandals in Dutch colonial administration, and it 
has lived on, and will live, by reason of a curious blend of 
vivacity and intensity. Here is a little piece of Mr. Dry- 
stubble's mind : — 

Business is slack on the Coffee Exchange. The Spring Auction will 
make it right again. Don't suppose, however, that we have nothing 
to do. At Busselinck and Waterman's trade is slacker still. It is a 
strange world this : one gets a deal of experience by frequenting the 
Exchange for twenty years. Only fancy that they have tried — I mean 
Busselinck and Waterman — to do me out of the custom of Ludwig Stern. 



168 DRYSTUBBLE 

As I do not know whether you are familiar with the Exchange, I will tell 
you that Stern is an eminent coffee-merchant in Hamburg, who always 
employed Last and Co. Quite accidentally I found that out — I mean 
that bunghng business of Busselinck and Waterman. They had offered 
to reduce the brokerage by one-fourth per cent. They are low fellows — 
nothing else. And now look what I have done to stop them. Any one 
in my place would perhaps have written to Ludwig Stern, " that we too 
would diminish the brokerage, and that we hoped for consideration on 
account of the long services of Last and Co." 

I have calculated that our firm, during the last fifty years, has gained 
four hundred thousand guilders by Stern. Our connexion dates from 
the beginning of the continental system, when we smuggled Colonial 
produce and such like things from Heligoland. No, I won't reduce the 
brokerage. 

I went to the Polen coffee-house, ordered pen and paper, and wrote : — 
" That because of the many honoured commissions received from 
North Germany, our business transactions had been extended" — (it is the 
simple truth) — " and that this necessitated an augmentation of our staff" — 
(it is the truth : no more than yesterday evening our bookkeeper was in 
the office after eleven o'clock to look for his spectacles) ; — " that, above 
all things, we were in want of respectable, educated young men to con- 
duct the German correspondence. That, certainly, there were many 
young Germans in Amsterdam, who possessed the requisite qualifications, 
but that a respectable firm " — (it is the very truth), — " seeing the frivolity 
and immorality of young men, and the daily increasing number of ad- 
venturers, and with an eye to the necessity of making correctness of 
conduct go hand in hand with correctness in the execution of orders " — 
(it is the truth, I observe, and nothing but the truth), — " that such a firm 
— I mean Last and Co., coffee-brokers, 37 Laurier Canal — could not be 
anxious enough in engaging new hands." 

All that is the simple truth, reader. Do you know that the young 
German who always stood at the Exchange, near the seventeenth pillar, 
has eloped with the daughter of Busselinck and Waterman ? Our Mary, 
like her, will be thirteen years old in September. 

'• That I had the honour to hear from Mr. Saffeler " — (Saffeler travels for 
Stern) — " that the honoured head of the firm, Ludwig Stern, had a son, Mr. 
Ernest Stern, who wished for employment for some time in a Dutch house. 
" That I, mindful of this " — (here I referred again to the immorality of 
employes, and also the history of that daughter of Busselinck and Water- 
man; it won't do any harm to tell it) — " that I, mindful of this, wished, 
with all my heart, to offer Mr. Ernest Stern the German correspondence 
of our firm." 



BETSY'S MURDERER 169 

From delicacy I avoided all allusion to honorarium or salary ; yet I 
said : — 

" That if Mr. Ernest Stern would like to stay with us, at 37 Laurier 
Canal, my wife would care for him as a mother, and have his linen 
mended in the house " — (that is the very truth, for Mary sews and knits 
very well), — and in conclusion I said, " that we were a religious family." 

The last sentence may do good, for the Sterns are Lutherans. I 
posted that letter. You understand that old Mr. Stern could not very 
well give his custom to Busselinck and Waterman, if his son were in our 
office. 

When Max Havelaar gets to Java the narrative is less 
satisfactory, so tangential does it become, but there are 
enough passages in the manner of that which I have quoted 
to keep one happy, and to show how entertaining a satirist 
of his own countrymen at home " Multatuli " (whose real 
name was Edward Douwes Dekker) might have been had 
he been possessed by no grievance. 

The book, which is very well worth reading, belongs to 
the literature of humanity and protest. Its author had 
to suffer much acrimonious attack, and was probably 
called a Little Hollander, but the fragment from an un- 
published play which he placed as a motto to his book 
shows him to have lacked no satirical power to meet the 
enemy : — 

Officer.^ — My Lord, this is the man who murdered Betsy. 

Judge. — He must hang for it. How did he do it ? 

Officer. — He cut up her body in little pieces, and salted them. 

Judge. — He is a great criminal. He must hang for it. 

Lothario. — My Lord, I did not murder Betsy : I fed and clothed 
and cherished her. I can call witnesses who will prove me to be a good 
man, and no murderer. 

Judge. — You must hang. You blacken your crime by your self- 
sufficiency. It ill becomes one who ... is accused of anything to set 
up for a good man. 

Lothario. — But, my Lord, . . . there are witnesses to prove it; and 
as I am now accused of murder ... 

Judge. — You must hang for it. You cut up Betsy — you salted the 



170 A COUNTRY OF ESSENTIALS 

pieces — and you are satisfied with your conduct — three capital counts— 
who are you, my good woman ? 

Woman. — I am Betsy. 

Lothario. — Thank God ! You see, my Lord, that I did not murder 
her. 

Judge.— Humph ! — ay — what ! — What about the salting ? 

Betsy. — No, my Lord, he did not salt me: — on the contrary, he did 
many things for me ... he is a worthy man ! 

Lothario. —You hear, my Lord, she says I am an honest man ! 

Judge. — Humph! — the third count remains. Officer, remove the 
prisoner, he must hang for it ; he is guilty of self-conceit. 

Shopkeeping — to return to Amsterdam — is the Dutch 
people's life. An idle rich class they may have, but it does 
not assert itself. It is hidden away at The Hague or at 
Arnheim. In Amsterdam every one is busy in one trade 
Oi another. There is no Pall Mall, no Rotten Row. There 
is no Bond Street or Rue de la Paix, for this is a country 
where money tries to procure money's worth, a country 
of essentials. Nor has Holland a Lord's or an Oval, Epsom 
Downs or Hurlingham. 

Perhaps the quickest way to visualise the differences of 
nations is to imagine them exchanging countries. If the 
English were to move to Holland the whole face of the 
land would immediately be changed. In summer the flat 
meadows near the towns, now given up to cows and plovers, 
would be dotted with cricketers ; in winter with football- 
players. Outriggers and canoes, punts and house-boats, 
would break out on the canals. In the villages such strange 
phenomena as idle gentlemen in knickerbockers and idle 
ladies with parasols would suddenly appear. 

To continue the list of changes (but not for too long) 
the trains would begin to be late ; from the waiting-rooms 
all free newspapers would be stolen ; churches would be 
made more comfortable; hundreds of newspapers would I 
exist where now only a handful are sufficient ; the hour 






ICE V. CHAPERON 171 

of breakfast would be later ; business would begin later ; 
drunken men would be seen in the streets, dirt in the 
cottages. 

If the Dutch came to England the converse would 
happen. The athletic grounds would become pasture land ; 
the dirt of our slums and the gentry of our villages would 
alike vanish ; Westminster Abbey would be whitewashed ; 
and . . . But I have said enough. 

It must not be thought that the Dutch play no games. 
As a matter of fact they were playing golf, as old pictures 
tell, before it had found its way to England at all ; and 
there are now many golf clubs in Holland. The Dutch 
are excellent also at lawn tennis ; and I saw the youth of 
Franeker very busy in a curious variety of rounders. There 
are horse-racing meetings and trotting competitions too. 
But the nation is not naturally athletic or sporting. It 
does not even walk except on business. 

In winter, however, the Dutch are completely trans- 
formed. No sooner does the ice bear than the whole people 
begin to glide, and swirl, and live their lives to the poetry 
of motion. The canals then become the real streets of 
Amsterdam. A Dutch lady — a mother and a grandmother 
— threw up her hands as she told me about the skating 
parties to the Zuyder Zee. The skate, it seems, is as much 
the enemy of the chaperon as the bicycle, although its 
reign is briefer. Upon this subject I am personally ignor- 
ant, but I take that gesture of alarm as final. 

And yet M. Havard, who had a Frenchman's eye and 
therefore knew, says that if Etna in full eruption were taken 
to Holland, at the end of the week it would have ceased 
even to smoke, so destructive to enthusiasm is the well- 
disciplined nature of the Dutch woman. 

M. Havard referred rather to the women of the open 



172 IF THERE WERE TREES 

country than the dwellers in the town. I can understand 
the rural coolness, for Holland is a land without mystery. 
Everything is plain and bare : a man in a balloon would 
know the amours of the whole populace. What chance 
has Cupid when there are no groves ? But let Holland be 
afforested and her daughters would keep Etna burning 
warmly enough; for I am persuaded that it is not that 
they are cold but that the physical development of the 
country is against them. 



CHAPTER XI 

AMSTERDAM'S PICTURES 

Dutch art in the palmy days — The Renaissance — A miracle — What 
Holland did for painting — The " Night Watch " — Rembrandt's 
isolation — Captain Franz Banning Cocq — EHzabeth Bas — The Staal- 
meesters — If one might choose one picture — Vermeer of Delft again — 
Whistler — " Paternal Advice " — Terburg — The romantic Frenchmen 
again — The Dutch painter's ideal — The two Maris— Old Dutch 
rooms — The Six Collection — " Six's Bridge " and the wager — The 
Fodor Museum. 

THE superlative excellence of Dutch painting in the 
seventeenth century has never been explained, and 
probably never will be. The ordinary story is that on 
settling down to a period of independence and comparative 
peace and prosperity after the cessation of the Spanish 
war, the Dutch people called for good art, and good art 
came. But that is too simple. That a poet, a statesman 
or a novelist should be produced in response to a national 
desire is not inconceivable ; for poets, statesmen and novel- 
ists find their material in the air, as we say, in the ideas 
of the moment. They are for the most part products of 
their time. But the great Dutch painters of the seven- 
j teenth century were expressing no real idea. Nor, even 
j supposing they had done so, is it to be understood how 
I the demand for them should yield such a supply of unsur- 
I passed technical power : how a perfectly disciplined hand 
should be instantly at the public service. 

(173) 



174 THE CALL FOR GENIUS 

That Holland in an expansivG mood of satisfaction at 
her success should have wished to see groups of her gallant 
arquebusiers and portraits of her eminent burghers is not 
to be wondered at, and we can understand that respectable 
painters of such pictures should arise in some force to 
supply the need — ^just as wherever in this country at the 
present day there are cricketers and actresses, there also 
are photographers. That painters of ordinary merit should 
be forthcoming is, as I have said, no wonder : the mystery 
is that masters of technique whose equal has never been 
before or since should have arisen in such numbers ; that 
in the space of a few years — between say 1590 and 1635 — 
should have been born in a country never before given to 
the cultivation of the arts Rembrandt and Jan Steen, 
Vei-meer and Ds Hooch, Van der Heist and Gerard Dou, 
Fabritius and Maes, Ostade and \'an Goyen, Potter and 
Ruisdael, Terburg and Cuyp. That is the staggering 
thing. 

Another curious circumstance is that by 1700 it was 
practically all over, and Dutch art had become a conven- 
tion. The gods had gone. Not until very recently has 
Holland had any but half gods since. 

It mav of COU1-S8 be urged that Italy had witnessed a 
somewhat similar phenomenon. But the spiritual stimulus 
of the Renaissance among the naturally artistic southernei-s 
cannot, I think, be compared with the stimulus given by 
the establishment of prosperity to these cold and material 
northerners. The making of great Italian art was a 
gradual process: the Dutch masters sprang forth fully 
armed at the first word of command. In the preceding 
generation the Rembrandts had been millers ; the Steens 
brewers ; the Dous glaziers ; and so forth. But the 
demand for pictm'es having sounded, their sons were 



A FIRESIDE FRIEND 175 

prepared to be painters of the first magnitude. Why try 
to explain this amazing event? Let there rather be 
miracles. 

I have said that the great Dutch painters expressed no 
idea ; and yet this is not perfectly true. They expressed 
no constructive idea, in the M^ay that a poet or statesman 
does ; but all had this in common, that they were informed 
by the desire to represent things — intirpate and local things 
— as they are. The great Itahans had gone to religion and 
mythology for their subjects : nearer at hand, in Antwerp, 
Rubens was pursuing, according to his lights, the same 
tradition. The great Dutchmen were the first painters 
to bend their genius exclusively to the honour of their 
own country, its worthies, its excesses, its domestic virtues, 
its trivial daiiiness. Hals and Rembrandt lavished their 
power on Dutch arquebusiers and governors of hospitals, 
Dutch burgomasters and physicians ; Ostade and Brouwer 
saw no indignity in painting Dutch sots as well as Dutch 
sots could be painted ; De Hooch introduced miracles of 
sunlight into Dutch cottages; Maes painted old Dutch 
housewives, and Metsu young Dutch housewives, to the 
life; Vermeer and Terburg immortalised Dutch ladies at 
their spinets ; Albert Cuyp toiled to suffuse Dutch meadows 
and Dutch cows with a golden glow ; Jan Steen glorified 
the humblest Dutch family scenes ; Gerard Dou spent 
whole weeks upon the fingers of a common Dutch hand. 
In short, art that so long had been at the service only oi 
the Church and the proud, became suddenly, without 
losing any of its divinity, a fireside friend. That is what 
Holland did for painting. 

It would have been a great enjoyment to me to have 
made this chapter a companion to the Ryks Museum : to 
have said a few words about all the pictures which I like 



176 " THE NIGHT WATCH " 

best. But had I done so the rest of the book would have 
had to go, for all my space would have been exhausted. 
And therefore, as I cannot say all I want to say, I propose 
to say very little, keeping only to the most importunate 
pictures. Here and there in this book, particularly in the 
chapters on Dordrecht, Haarlem, and Leyden's painters, 
I have already touched on many of them. 

The particular shining glory of the Ryks Museum is 
Rembrandt's "Night Watch," and it is well, I think, to 
make for that picture at once. The direct approach is 
down the Gallery of Honour, where one has this wonder- 
ful canvas before one all the way, as near life as perhaps 
any picture ever painted. It is possible at first to be dis- 
appointed : expectation perhaps had been running too 
high; the figure of the lieutenant (in the yellow jerkin) 
may strike one as a little mean. But do not let this 
distress you. Settle down on one of the seats and take 
Rembrandt easily, " as the leaf upon the tree " ; settle 
down on another, and from the new point of view take 
him easily, " as the grass upon the weir ". Look at Van 
der Heist's fine company of arquebusiers on one of the side 
walls ; look at Franz Hals' company of arquebusiers on the 
other ; then look at Rembrandt again. Every minute his 
astounding power is winning upon you. Walk again up 
the Gallery of Honour and turning quickly at the end, 
see how much light there is in the "Night Watch". 
Advance upon it slowly. . . . This is certainl}^ the finest 
technical triumph of pigment that you have seen. What 
a glow and greatness. 

After a while it becomes evident that Rembrandt was 
the only man who ought to have painted arquebusiers at 
all. Van der Heist and Franz Hals are sinking to the 
level of gifted amateurs. Why did not Rembrandt paint 



THE REMBRANDTS 177 

all the pictures ? you begin to wonder. And yet the 
Hals and the Van der Heists were so good a little while 
ago. 

Hals and Van der Heist are, however, to recover their 
own again ; for the " Night Watch," I am told, is to 
be moved to a building especially erected for it, where 
the lighting will be more satisfactory than connoisseurs 
now consider it. Perhaps it is as well. It is hard to 
be so near the rose ; and there are few pictures in the 
recesses of the Gallery of Honour which the " Night 
Watch " does not weaken ; some indeed it makes quite 
foolish. 

It is not of course really a night watch at all. Captain 
Franz Banning Cocq's arquebusiers are leaving their Doelen 
in broad day ; the centralisation of sunlight from a high 
window led to the mistake, and nothing now will ever 
change the title. 

How little these careless gallant arquebusiers, who paid 
the painter-man a hundred florins apiece to be included in 
the picture, can have thought of the destiny of the work ! 
Of Captain Franz Banning Cocq as a soldier we know 
nothing, but as a sitter he is hardly second to any in the 
world. 

But it is not the "Night Watch" that I recall with the 
greatest pleasure when I think of the Ryks Rembrandts. 
It is that wise and serene old lady in the Van der Poll 
room — Elizabeth Bas — who sits there for all time, un- 
surpassed among portraits. This picture alone is worth 
a visit to Holland. I recall also, not with more pleasure 
than the '' Night Watch," but with little less, the superb 
group of syndics in the Staalmeester room. It is this 
picture — with the "School of Anatomy" at The Hague — 
that in particular makes one wish it had been possible for 

12 



178 IF ONE MIGHT CHOOSE 

all the Corporation pieces to have been from Rembrandt's 
brush. It is this picture which deprives even Hals of some 
of his divinitv, and makes Van der Heist a dull doff. If 
ever a picture of Dutch gentlemen was painted by a Dutch 
gentleman it is this. 

Having seen the " Night Watch " again, it is a good 
plan to study the Gallery of Honour. To pick out one's 
favourite picture is here not difficult : it is No. 1501, "The 
Endless Prayer," by Nicolas Maes, of which I have said 
something in the chapter on Dordrecht, the painter's birth- 
place. Its place is very little below that of Elizabeth Bas, 
by Maes's master. 

It is always interesting in a fine gallery to ask oneself 
which single picture one would choose before all others if 
such a privilege were offered. The answer if honest is a 
sure revelation of temperament, for one would select of a 
certainty a picture satisfying one's prevailing moods rather 
than a picture of any sensational character. In other words, 
the picture would have to be good to live with. To choose 
from thousands of masterpieces one only is a very delicate 
test. 

If the Dutch Government, stimulated to gratitude for 
the encomiastic character of the present book, were to oifer 
me my choice of the Ryks Museum pictures I should not 
hesitate a moment. I should take No. 2527 — "Woman 
Reading a Letter" (damaged), by Vermeer of Delft. You 
will see a reproduction in black and white on the opposite 
page ; but how wide a gulf between the picture and the 
process block. The jacket, for example, is the most lovely 
cool blue imaginable. 

This picture, apart from its beauty, is interesting as an 
illustration of the innovating courage of Vermeer. Who 
else at that date would have placed the woman's head 




THE READER 

JAN VERMEER 

From the picture in the Ryks Museu77i 



MONEY POWERLESS 179 

against a map almost its own colour ? Many persons think 
that such daring began with Whistler. It is, however, 
Terburg who most often suggests Whistler. Vermeer had, 
I think, a rarer distinction than Terburg. Vermeer would 
never have painted such a crowded group (however masterly) 
as that of Terburg's " Peace of Munster " in our National 
Gallery; he could not have brought himself so to pack 
humanity. Among all the Dutch masters I find no such 
fastidious aristocrat. 

He, Vermeer, has another picture at the Ryks — "De 
brief" (No. 2528) — which technically is wonderful; but 
the whole effect is artificial and sophisticated, very different 
from his best transparent mood. 

Any mortification, by the way, which I might suffer 
from the knowledge that No. 2527 can never be mine is 
allayed by the knowledge, equally certain, that it can 
never be any one else's. Money is powerless here. To 
the offer of a Rothschild the Government would return as 
emphatic a negative as to a request from me. 

The room in which is Vermeer's " Reader " contains also 
Maes's " Spinning Woman " (see page 230), two or three 
Peter de Hoochs and the best Jan Steen in the Ryks. 
It is indeed a room to linger in, and to return to, inde- 
finitely. De Hooch's " Store Room " (No. 1248), of which 
I have already spoken, is in one of the little " Cabinet 
piece " rooms, which are not too well lighted. Here also 
one may spend many hours, and then many hours more. 

The " Peace of Munster " has been called Terburg's 
masterpiece : but the girl in his " Paternal Advice," No. 
570 at the Ryks, seems to me a finer achievement. The 
grace and beauty and truth of her pose and the miraculous 
painting of her dress are unrivalled. Yet judged as a 
picture it is, I think, dull. The colouring is dingy, time 



180 TERBURG 

has not dealt kindly with the background ; but the figure 
of the girl is perfect. I give a reproduction opposite page 
190. It was this picture, in one of its replicas, that Goethe 
describes in his Elective Affinities : a description which pro- 
cured for it the probably inaccurate title "Parental 
Advice ". 

We have a fine Terburg in our National Gallery — " The 
Music Lesson " — and here too is his " Peace of Munster," 
which certainly was a great feat of painting, but which 
does not, I think, reproduce his peculiar characteristics and 
charm. These may be found somewhere between " The 
Music Lesson " and the portrait next the Vermeer in the 
smallest of the three Dutch rooms. Even more ingratia- 
ting than "The Music Lesson" is "The Toilet" at the 
Wallace Collection. Terburg might be called a pocket 
Velasquez — a description of him which will be appreciated 
at the Ryks Museum in the presence of his tiny and 
captivating " Helena van der Schalcke," No. 573, one of 
the gems of the Cabinet pieces (see opposite page 290), 
and his companion pictures of a man and his wife, each 
standing by a piece of red furniture — I think Nos. 574 
and 575. The execution of the woman's muslin collar 
is among the most dexterous things in Dutch art. 

From the Ryks Museum it is but a little way (past the 
model Dutch garden) to the Stadelijks Museum, where 
modern painting may be studied — Israels and Bosboom, 
Mesdag and James Maris, Breitner and Jan van Beers, 
Blommers and Weissenbruch. 

There is also one room dedicated to paintings of the 
Barbizon school, and of this I would advise instant search. 
I rested my eyes here for an hour. A vast scene of cattle 
by Troyon (who, such is the poverty of the Dutch alphabet, 
comes out monstrously upon the frame as Troijon) ; a 



DUTCH ROMANTICS 181 

mysterious valley of trees by Corot ; a wave by Courbet ; 
a mere at evening by Daubigny — these are like cool firm 
hands upon one's forehead. 
The statement 

Nothing graceful, wise, or sainted, — 
That is how the Dutchman painted, 

is so sweeping as to be untrue. Indeed it is wholly absurd. 
The truth simply is that one goes to Dutch art for the 
celebration of fact without mystery or magic. In other 
words, Dutch painting is painting without poetry ; and it 
is this absence of poetry which makes the romantic French- 
men appear to be such exotics when one finds them in 
Holland, and why it is so pleasant in Holland now and 
then to taste their quality, as one may at the Stadelijks 
Museum and in the Mesdag Collection at The Hague. 

We must not forget, however, that under the French 
influence certain modern Dutch painters have been quickened 
to celebrate the fact with poetry. In a little room adjoin- 
ing the great French room at the Stadelijks Museum will 
be found some perfect things by living or very recent 
artists for whom Corot did not work in vain : a mere by 
James Maris, with a man in a blue coat sitting in a boat ; 
a marsh under a white sky by Matthew Maris ; a village 
scene by the same exquisite craftsman. These three pictures, 
but especially the last two, are in their way as notable and 
beautiful as anything by the great names in Dutch art. 

On the ground floor of the Stadelijks Museum is the 
series of rooms named after the Suasso family which should 
on no account be missed, but of which no notice is given 
by the Museum authorities. These rooms are furnished 
exactly as they would have been by the best Dutch families, 
their furniture and hangings having been brought from old 
houses in the Keizersgracht and the Heerengracht. The 



182 THE SUASSO ROOMS 

kitchen is one of the prettiest things in Holland — with its 
shining brass and copper, its delicate and dainty tiles and 
its air of cheerful brightness. Some of the carving in the 
other rooms is superb ; the silver, the china, the clocks are 
all of the choicest. The custodian has a childlike interest 
in secret drawers and unexpected recesses, which he exhibits 
with a gusto not habitual in the Dutch cicerone. For 
the run of these old rooms a guelder is asked ; one sees the 
three rooms on the other side of the entrance hall for twenty- 
five cents, the church and museum unit of Holland. But 
they were uninteresting beside the larger suite. They 
consist of an old Dutch apothecary's shop and laboratory ; 
a madhouse cell ; and the bedroom of a Dutch lady who 
has j ust presented her lord with an infant. We see the 
mother in bed, a doctor at her side, and in the foreground 
a nurse holding the baby. Except that the costumes and 
accessories are authentic the tableau is in no way superior 
to an ordinary waxwork. 

At the beginning of the last chapter I said that the 
Keizersgracht and Heerengracht do not divulge their 
secrets ; they present an impassive and inscrutable front, 
grave and sombre, often black as night, beyond which the 
foreigner may not penetrate. But by the courtesy of the 
descendants of Rembrandt's fiiend Jan Six, in order that 
pleasure in their collection of the old masters may be 
shared. No. 511 Heerengracht is shown on the presentation 
of a visiting card at suitable hours. Here may be seen 
two more of the rare pictures of Vermeer of Delft — his 
famous " Milk Woman " and a Dutch facade in the manner 
of Peter de Hooch, with an added touch of grave dehcacy 
and distinction. Peter de Hooch is himself represented in 
this little gallery, but the picture is in bad condition. 
There is also an interesting and uncharacteristically 



REMBRANDT'S WAGER 183 

dramatic Nicolas Maes called "The Listener". But the 
pride of the house is the little group of portraits by 
Rembrandt. 

It was, by the way, at Burgomaster Six's house at 
Elsbroek that Rembrandt's little etching called "Six's 
Bridge" was executed. Rembrandt and his friend had 
just sat down to dinner when it was discovered that there 
was no mustard. On a servant being sent to buy or borrow 
some, Rembrandt made a bet that he would complete an 
etching of the bridge before the man's return. The artist 
won. 

Another little private collection, which has now become 
a regular resort, with fixed hours, is that known as the 
Fodor Museum, at No. 609 Keizersgracht ; but I do not 
recommend a visit unless one is absolutely a glutton for 
paint. 



CHAPTER XII 

AROUND AMSTERDAM : SOUTH AND SOUTH-EAST 

Dutch railways — Amsterdam as a centre — Town and country — Milking 
time — Scotch scenery in Holland — Hilversum — Laren — Anton Mauve 
— Buckwheat Sunday — Dress in Holland — Naarden's hour of agony 
— The indomitable Dutch — Through Noord-Holland again — Muider- 
berg — Muiden's Castle. 

THE Dutch have several things to learn from the 
English ; and there are certain lessons which we 
might acquire fr-om them. To them we might impart the 
uses of the salt-spoon, and ask in return the secret of 
punctuality on the railways. 

The Dutch railways are admirable. The trains come in 
to the minute and go out to the minute. The officials are 
intelligent and polite. The carriages are good. Every 
station has its waiting-room, where you may sit and read, 
and drink a cup of coffee that is not only hot and fresh 
but is recognisably the product of the berry. It is impos- 
sible to travel in the wrong train. It is very difficult not 
to get out at the right station. The fares are very reason- 
able. The stationmasters are the only visible and tangible 
members of the Dutch aristocracy. The disposition of one's 
luggage is very simple when once it has been mastered. 
The time tables are models of clarity. 

The only blot on the system is the detestable double 
fastening to the carriage doors, and the curious fancy, 

(184) 



AMSTERDAM AS A CENTRE 185 

prevalrnt on the Continent, that a platform is a vanity. 
It is a perpetual wonder to me that some of the wider 
Dutch ever succeed in climbing into their trains at all ; and 
yet after accomplishing one's own ascent one discovers 
them seated there comfortably and numerously enough, 
showing no signs of the struggle. 

Travellers who find the Dutch tendency to closed windows 
a trial beyond endurance may be interested to know 
that it is law in Holland that if any passenger wish it the 
window on the lee side may be open. With the knowledge 
of this enactment all difficulty should be over — provided 
that one has sufficient strength of purpose (and acquaintance 
with the Dutch language) to enforce it. 

All this preamble concerning railways is by way of 
introduction to the statement (hinted at in the first 
chapter) that if the traveller in Holland likes, he can 
see a great part of the country by staying at Amsterdam 
— making the city his headquarters, and every day journey- 
ing here and there and back again by train or canal. 

A few little neighbouring towns it is practically necessary 
to visit from Amsterdam ; and for the most part, I take it, 
Leyden and Haarlem are made the object of excursions 
either from Amsterdam or The Hague, rather than places 
of sojourn, although both have excellent quiet inns much 
more to my taste than anything in the largest city. Indeed 
I found Amsterdam's hotels exceedingly unsatisfactory ; 
so much so that the next time I go, when the electric 
railway to Haarlem is open, I am proposing to invert 
completely the usual process, and, staying at Haarlem, 
study Amsterdam from there. 

For the time being, however, we must consider ourselves 
at Amsterdam, branchingout north or south, east or west, 
every morning. 



186 MILKING TIME 

A very interesting excursion may be made to Hilversum, 
returning by the steam-tram through Laren, Naarden and 
Muiden. The rail runs at first through flat and very 
verdant meadows, where thousands of cows that supply 
Amsterdam with milk are grazing ; and one notices again 
the suddenness with which the Dutch city ends and the 
Dutch country begins. Our English towns have straggling 
outposts : new houses, scaiFold poles, cottages, allotments, 
all break the transition from city to country ; the urban 
gives place to suburban, and suburban to rural, gradually, 
every inch being contested. But the Dutch towns — 
even the great cities — end suddenly ; the country begins 
suddenly. 

In England for the most part the cow comes to the 
milker ; but in Holland the milker goes to the cow. His 
first duty is to bind the animal's hind legs together, and 
then he sets his stool at his side and begins. Anton 
Mauve has often painted the scene — so often that at 
milking time one looks from the carriage windows at a 
very gallery of Mauves. I noticed this particularly on an 
afternoon journey from Amsterdam to Hilversum, between 
the city and Weesp, where the meadows (cricket grounds 
manques) are flat as billiard tables. 

The train later runs between great meres, some day 
perhaps to be reclaimed, and then dashes into country that 
resembles very closely our Government land about Woking 
and Bisley — the first sand and firs that we have seen in 
Holland. It has an odd and unexpected appearance ; but 
as a matter of fact hundreds of square miles of Holland 
in the south and east have this character; while there 
are stretches of Dutch heather in which one can feel in 
Scotland. 

All about Naarden and Hilversum are sanatoria, country- 




MILKING TIxAII': 

AX TON MAUVE 



ANTON MAUVE 187 

seats and pleasure grounds, the softening effect of the pines 
upon the strong air of the Zuyder Zee being very bene- 
ficial. Many of the heights have towers or pavilions, some 
of which move the author of Through Noord-Holland to 
ecstasies. As thus, of the Larenberg : " The most charm- 
ing is the tower, where one can enjoy a perspective that 
only rarely presents itself. We can see here the towers of 
Nijkerk, Harderwijk, Utrecht, Amersfoort, Bunschoten, 
Amsterdam and many others." And again, of a wood at 
Heideheuvel : " The perspective beauty here formed cannot 
be said in words ". 

Hilversum is the Chislehurst of Holland — a discreet and 
wealthy suburb, where business men have their villas amid 
the trees. It is a pleasant spot, excellent from which to 
explore. 

The author of Through Noord-Holland thus describes 
Laren, which lies a few miles from Hilversum and is 
reached by tram : " Surrounded by arable land and hilly 
heathery it is richly provided with picturesque spots ; 
country-seats, villas, ordinary houses and farms are follow- 
ing one another. For those who are searching for rest 
and calmness is this village very recommendable." But to 
say only that is to omit Laren's principal claim to distinc- 
tion — its fame as the home of Anton Mauve. 

No great painter of nature probably ever adapted less 
than Mauve. His pictures, oils and water-colours alike, 
are the real thing, very true, very beautiful, low-toned, 
always with a touch of wistfulness and melancholy. He 
found his subjects everywhere, and justified them by the 
sympathy and truth of his exquisite modest art. 

Chiefly he painted peasants and cows. What a spot of 
red was to Corot, the blue linen jacket of the Dutch peasant 
was to his disciple. I never hear the name of Mauve with- 



188 THE BLUE JACKET 

out instantly seeing a black and white cow and a boy in a 
blue jacket amid Holland's evening green. 

At Laren Mauve's fame is kept sweet by a little colony 
of artists, who like to draw their inspiration where the 
great painter drew his. 

North of Laren, on the sea coast, is the fishing village of 
Huizen, where the women have a neat but very sedate 
costume. They wear white caps with curved sides that 
add grace to a pretty cheek. Having, however, the odd 
fancy that a flat chest is more desirable than a rounded 
one, they compress their busts into narrow compass, striving 
as far as possible to preserve vertical lines. At the waist 
a plethora of petticoats begins, spreading the skirts to in- 
ordinate width and emphasising the meagreness above. 

The sombre attire of the Huizen women is a contrast to 
most of the traditional costumes of Holland, which are 
charming, full of gay colom' and happy design. The art 
of dress seems otherwise to be dead in Holland to-day. In 
the towns the ordinary conventional dress is dull ; and in 
the country it is without any charm. Holland as a whole, 
omitting the costumes, cannot be said to have any more 
knowledge of clothes than we have. It is only by the blue 
linen jackets of the men in the fields that the situation is 
saved and the Dutch are proved our superiors. How cool 
and grateful to the eyes this blue jacket can be all admirers 
of Mauve's pictures know. 

Naarden and Muiden are curiously mediaeval. The steam- 
tram has been rushing along for some miles, past beer 
gardens and villas, when suddenly it slows to walking pace 
as we twist in and out over the bridges of a moat, and 
creeping through the tunnel of a rampart are in the 
narrow streets of a fortified town. Both Naarden and 
Muiden are suiTOunded by moats and fortifications. 



NAARDEN 189 

Naarden's crowning hour of agony was in 1572, since it 
had the misfortune to stand in the path of Don Frederic 
on his way from Zutphen, where not a citizen had been left 
alive, to Amsterdam. The story of the surrender of the 
city to Don Romero under the pledge that life and property 
should be respected, and of the dastardly and fiendish dis- 
regard of this pledge by the Spaniards, is the most ghastly 
in the whole war. From Motley I take the account of the 
tragedy : — 

" On the 2Snd of November a company of one hundred 
troopers was sent to the city gates to demand its surrender. 
The small garrison which had been left by the Prince was 
not disposed to resist, but the spirit of the burghers was 
stouter than their walls. They answered the summons by 
a declaration that they had thus far held the city for the 
King and the Prince of Orange, and, with God's help, would 
continue so to do. As the horsemen departed with this 
reply, a lunatic, called Adrian Krankhoeft, mounted the 
ramparts, and discharged a culverine among them. No 
man was injured, but the words of defiance, and the shot 
fired by a madman's hand, were destined to be fearfully 
answered. 

" Meanwhile, the inhabitants of the place, which was at 
best far from strong, and ill provided with arms, ammuni- 
tion, or soldiers, despatched importunate messages to Sonoy, 
and to other patriot generals nearest to them, soliciting 
reinforcements. Their messengers came back almost empty- 
handed. They brought a little powder and a great many 
promises, but not a single man-at-arms, not a ducat, not a 
piece of artillery. The most influential commanders, more- 
over, advised an honourable capitulation, if it were still 
possible. 

" Thus baffled, the burghers of the little city found their 



190 SUSPICIONS 

proud position quite untenable. They accordingly, on the 
1st of December, despatched the burgomaster and a senator 
to Amersfoort, to make terms, if possible, with Don 
Frederic. When these envoys reached the place, they were 
refused admission to the general's presence. The army 
had already been ordered to move forward to Naarden, and 
they were directed to accompany the advance guard, and 
to expect their reply at the gates of their own city. This 
command was sufRcently ominous. The impression which 
it made upon them was confirmed by the warning voices 
of their friends in Amersfoort, who entreated them not to 
return to Naarden. The advice was not lost upon one 
of the two envoys. After they had advanced a little dis- 
tance on their journey, the burgomaster, Laurentszoon, slid 
privately out of the sledge in which they were travelling, 
leaving his cloak behind him. 'Adieu ; I think I will not 
venture back to Naarden at present,' said he calmly, as he 
abandoned his companion to his fate. The other, who 
could not so easily desert his children, his wife, and his 
fellow-citizens in the hour of danger, went forward as calmly 
to share in their impending doom. 

" The army reached Bussum, half a league distant from 
Naarden, in the evening. Here Don Frederic established 
his headquarters, and proceeded to invest the city. Senator 
Gerrit was then directed to return to Naarden, and to bring 
out a more numerous deputation on the following morn- 
ing, duly empowered to surrender the place. The envoy 
accordingly returned next day, accompanied by Lambert 
Hortensius, rector of a Latin academy, together with four 
other citizens. Before this deputation had reached Bussum, 
they were met by Julian Romero, who informed them that 
he was commissioned to treat with them on the part of Don 
Frederic. He demanded the keys of the city, and gave the 




PATERNAL ADVICE 

GERARD TERBURG 

From the pictiiyx in the Ryks Mitsewn 



TREACHERY 191 

deputation a solemn pledge that the lives and property of 
all the inhabitants should be sacredly respected. To attest 
this assurance, Don Julian gave his hand three several times 
to Lambert Hortensius. A soldier's word thus plighted, 
the commissioners, without exchanging any written docu- 
ments, surrendered the keys, and immediately afterwards 
accompanied Romero into the city, who was soon followed 
by five or six hundred musketeers. 

"To give these guests an hospitable reception, all the 
housewives of the city at once set about preparations for 
a sumptuous feast, to which the Spaniards did ample 
justice, while the colonel and his officers were entertained 
by Senator Gerrit at his own house. As soon as this con- 
viviality had come to an end, Romero, accompanied by his 
host, walked into the square. The great bell had been 
meantime ringing, and the citizens had been summoned to 
assemble in the Gast Huis Church, then used as a town 
hall. In the course of a few minutes 500 had entered the 
building, and stood quietly awaiting whatever measures 
might be offered for their deliberation. Suddenly a priest, 
who had been pacing to and fro before the church door, 
entered the building and bade them all prepare for death ; 
but the announcement, the preparation, and the death, 
were simultaneous. The door was flung open, and a band 
of armed Spaniards rushed across the sacred threshold. 
They fired a single volley upon the defenceless herd, and 
then sprang in upon them with sword and dagger. A yell 
of despair arose as the miserable victims saw how hopelessly 
they were engaged, and beheld the ferocious faces of their 
j butchers. The carnage within that narrow space was com- 
I pact and rapid. Within a few minutes all were despatched, 
I and among them Senator Gerrit, from whose table the 
j Spanish commander had but just risen. The church was 



192 HORTENSIUS 

then set on fire, and the dead and dying were consumed 
to ashes together. 

" Inflamed but not satiated, the Spaniards then rushed 
into the streets, thirsty for fresh horrors. The houses were 
all rifled of their contents, and men were forced to carry 
the booty to the camp, who were then struck dead as their 
reward. The town was then fired in every direction, that 
the skulking citizens might be forced from their hiding- 
places. As fast as they came forth they were put to death by 
their impatient foes. Some were pierced with rapiers, some 
were chopped to pieces with axes, some were surrounded 
in the blazing streets by troops of laughing soldiers, intoxi- 
cated, not with wine but with blood, who tossed them to 
and fro with their lances, and derived a wild amusement 
from their dying agonies. Those who attempted resistance 
were crimped alive like fishes, and left to gasp themselves 
to death in lingering torture. The soldiers becoming more 
and more insane, as the foul work went on, opened the 
veins of some of their victims, and drank then- blood as if 
it were wine. Some of the burghers were for a time spared, 
that they might witness the violation of their wives and 
daughters, and were then butchered in company with these 
still more unfortunate victims. Miracles of brutality were 
accomplished. Neither church nor hearth was sacred. Men 
were slain, women outraged at the altars, in the streets, in 
their blazing homes. The life of Lambert Hortensius was 
spared out of regard to his learning and genius, but he 
hardly could thank his foes for the boon, for they struck 
his only son dead, and tore his heart out before his father's 
eyes. Hardly any man or woman survived, except by 
accident. A body of some hundred burghers made their 
escape across the snow into the open country. They were, 
however, overtaken, stripped stark naked, and hung upon 



MASSACRE 193 

the trees by the feet, to freeze, or to perish by a more 
lingering death. Most of them soon died, but twenty, who 
happened to be wealthy, succeeded, after enduring much 
torture, in purchasing their lives of their inhuman perse- 
cutors. The principal burgomaster, Heinrich Lamberts- 
zoon, was less fortunate. Known to be affluent, he was 
tortured by exposing the soles of his feet to a fire until 
they were almost consumed. On promise that his life 
should be spared he then agreed to pay a heavy ransom ; 
but hardly had he furnished the stipulated sum when, by 
express order of Don Frederic himself, he was hanged in 
his own doorway, and his dissevered limbs afterwards nailed 
to the gates of the city. 

" Nearly all the inhabitants of Naarden, soldiers and 
citizens, were thus destroyed ; and now Don Frederic issued 
peremptory orders that no one, on pain of death, should 
give lodging or food to any fugitive. He likewise forbade 
to the dead all that could now be forbidden them — a grave. 
Three weeks long did these unburied bodies pollute the 
streets, nor could the few wretched women who still cowered 
within such houses as had escaped the flames ever move 
from their lurking-places without treading upon the fester- 
ing remains of what had been their husbands, their fathers, 
or their brethren. Such was the express command of him 
whom the flatterers called the ' most divine genius ever 
known '. Shortly afterwards came an order to dismantle 
the fortifications, which had certainly proved sufficiently 
feeble in the hour of need, and to raze what was left of 
the city from the surface of the earth. The work was faith- 
fully accomplished, and for a long time Naarden ceased to 
exist." 

The Naarden of to-day sprang from the ruins. Mendoza's 
comment upon the siege ran thus : " The sack of Naarden 
13 



194 THE DUTCH GUIDE AGAIN 

was a chastisement which must be believed to have taken 
place by express permission of a Divine Providence ; a 
punishment for having been the first of the Holland towns 
in which heresy built its nest, whence it has taken flight to 
all the neighbouring cities ". None the less, " the hearts of 
the Hollanders," says Motley, "were rather steeled to re- 
sistance than awed into submission by the fate of Naarden " ; 
as Don Frederic found when he passed on to besiege Haarlem 
and later Alkmaar. 

To Muiderburg, between Naarden and Muiden, I have 
not been, and therefore with the more readiness quote my 
indispensable author : — 

In summer is Muiderberg by its situation at the Zuiderzee a favourite 
little spot ani very recommendable for nervous people. The number of 
those who sought cure and found it here is enormous. It is the vacation- 
place by excellence. There is a church with square tower and organ. 
About the tower, the spire of which is failing, various opinions go round 
how this occured, by war, by shooting or storm. 

The beautiful beech-grove in the center of the village, where a lot of 
forest-giants are rising in the sky in severe rows, is a favorite place, in 
the middle of which is a hill with fine pond. 

A couple of years ago Geertruida Carelsen wrote in her Berlin letters 
that Muiderberg perhaps is the only bathing-place where sea and wood 
are united. There are three well-known graveyards. 

Of Muiden's very picturesque moated castle — the ideal 
castle of a romance — Peter Comellissen Hooft, the poet 
and historian, was once custodian. It was built in the 
thirteenth century and restored by Florence V., who was 
subsequently incarcerated there. As the Noord-Holland 
guide-book sardonically remarks, " He will never have 
thought that he built his own prison by it ". 



CHAPTER XIII 

AROUND AMSTERDAM : NORTH 

To Marken — An opera-houffe island — Cultivated and profitable simpli- 
city — Broek-in-Waterland — Cow-damp — The two doors — Ginger- 
bread and love — Dead cities — Monnickendam — The overturned 
camera — Dutch phlegm — Brabant the quarrelsome — Edam — Hol- 
land's great churches — Edam's roll of honour — A beard of note — A 
Dutch Daniel Lambert — A virgin colossus — A ship-owner indeed 
— The mermaid — Volendam — Taciturnity and tobacco — Purmerend 
— The land of windmills — Zaandam — Green paint at its highest 
power — A riverside inn — Peter the Great. 

AN excursion which every one will say is indispensable 
takes one to Marken (pronounced Mannker) ; but I 
have my doubts. The island may be reached from Amster- 
dam either by boat, going by way of canal and returning 
by sea, or one may take the steam-tram to Monnickendam 
or Edam, and then fall into the hands of a Marken mariner. 
To escape his invitations to sail thither is a piece of good 
fortune that few visitors succeed in achieving. 

Marken in winter wears perhaps a genuine air ; in the 
season of tourists it has too much the suggestion of opera 
houffe. The men's costume is comic beyond reason ; the 
inhabitants are picturesque of set design ; the old women 
at their doorways are too consciously the owners of quaint 
habitations, glimpses of which catch the eye by well- 
studied accident. I must confess to being glad to leave : 
for either one was intruding upon a simple folk entirely 

(195) 



196 "MARRIKER" 

surrounded by water ; or the simple folk, knowing human 
nature, had made itself up and sent out its importunate 
young from strictly mercenary motives. In either case 
Marken is no place for a sensitive traveller. The theory 
that the Marken people are savages is certainly a wrong one ; 
they have carried certain of the privileges of civilisation very 
far and can take care of themselves with unusual cleverness. 
Moreover, no savage would cover his legs with such garments 
as the men adhere to. 

What is wrong with Marken is that for the most part it 
subsists on sight-seei-s, which is bad ; and it too generally 
suggests that a stage-manager, employed by a huge Trust, 
is somewhere in the background. It cannot be well with a 
community that encourages its children to beg of visitors. 

The women, however, look sensible : fine upstanding 
creatures with a long curl of yellow hair on each side of 
their faces. One meets them now and then in Amsterdam 
streets, by no means dismayed by the traffic and bustle. 
Their head-dresses are striking and gay, and the front of 
their bodices is elaborately embroidered, the prevailing 
colours being red and pink. Bright hues are also very 
popular within doors on this island, perhaps by way of 
counteracting the external monotony, the Marken walls 
being washed with yellow and hung with Delft plates, while 
the fui-niture and hangings all have a cheerful gaiety. 

The island is flat save for the mounds on which its 
villages are built, each house standing on poles to allow 
the frequent inundations of the winter free way. If one 
has the time and money it is certainly better to visit 
Marken in a fishing-boat than in the steamer — provided 
that one can trust oneself to navigators masquerading in 
such bloomers. 

The steamers from Amsterdam pause for a while at 



BROEK 197 

Broek and Monnickendam. Broek-in-Waterland, to give 
it its full title, is one of the quaintest of Dutch villages. 
But unfortunately Broek also has become to some extent a 
professional "sight". Its cleanliness, however, for which 
it is famous, is not an artificial effect attained to impress 
visitors, but a genuine enough characteristic. The houses 
are gained by little bridges which, with various other 
idiosyncrasies, help to make Broek a delight to children. 
If a company of children were to be allowed to manage a 
small republic entirely alone, the whimsical millionaire who 
fathered the project might do worse than buy up this 
village for the experiment. 

In the model dairy farm of Broek, through which visitors 
file during the time allowed by the steam-boat's captain, 
things happen as they should : the cows' tails are tied to 
the roof, and all is spick and span. The author of Through 
Noord-Holland tells us that among the dairy's illustrious 
visitors was an Italian duchess from Livorno who ordered 
cheese for herself, for the Princess Borghese and for the 
Duke of Ceri. Everything in the farm, he adds, "is 
glimmering and glittering ". 

One of the phenomena of Broek is thus explained by the 
same ingenious author: "By beholding the dark-tinted 
columns attentively one sees something dull here and there. 
In the year 1825, when the great flood inundated whole 
Broek, men as well as cattle flied into the church, which 
lies so much higher and remained quite free of water. By 
the exhalations of the cows, the cow-damp, has the wood 
been blemished and made dull at many places, chamois 
nor polish could help, the dullness remained." The church 
has beauties to set against the phenomenon of cow-damp, 
and among them a very elaborate carved pulpit in various 
precious woods, and some fine lamps. 



198 LOVERS 

Ireland tells us that the front doors of many of Broek's 
houses are opened only twice in their owners' lives — when 
they marry and when they die. For the rest the back 
door must serve. The custom is not confined to Broek, 
but is found all over North Holland. These ceremonial 
front doors are often very ornate. It was also at Broek 
that Ireland picked up his information as to the best 
means of winning the Dutch heart. "Laughable as it 
may seem, a safe expedient to insure the affections of the 
lower class of these lasses, is to arm yourself well with 
gingerbread. The fii'st question the lover is asked after 
knocking at the door, when the parents are supposed to be 
in bed, is, ' Have you any gingerbread ? ' If he replies in 
the affirmative, he finds little difficulty in gaining admis- 
sion. A second visit ensures his success, and the lady yields." 
I can add a little to this. When a young man thinks of 
courting he first speaks to the parents, and if they are will- 
ing to encourage him he is asked to spend the evening with 
their daughter. They then discreetly retire to bed and leave 
the world to him. Under his arm is a large cake, not 
necessarily of gingerbread, and this he deposits on the 
table, with or without words. If he is acceptable in the 
girl's eyes she at once puts some more peat on the fire. He 
then knows that all is well with him: the cake is cut, 
and Romance is king. But if the fire is not replenished 
he must gather up his cake and return to his home. A 
very favourite Dutch pictm'e represents " The Cutting of 
the Cake ". I have heard that the Dutch wife takes her 
husband's left arm ; the Dutch fiancee her lover's right. 

Monnickendam, on the shores of the Zuyder Zee, is 
now a desolate sleepy spot ; once it was one of the great 
towns of Holland, at the time when The Hague was a 
village. I say Zuyder Zee, but strictly speaking it is on 



THE OVERTURNED CAMERA 199 

the Gouwzee, the name of the straits between Monnick- 
endam and Marken. It is here, in winter, when the ice 
holds, that a fair is held, to which come all Amsterdam on 
skates, to eat pofFertjes and wafelen, 

Monnickendam affords our first sight of what are called 
very misleadingly the "Dead Cities of the Zuyder Zee," 
meaning merely towns which once were larger and busier. 
Monnickendam was sufficiently important to fit out a fleet 
against the Spanish in 1573, under Cornelius Dirckszoon 
(whose tomb we saw at Delft) and capture Bossu in the 
battle of Hoorn. 

To-day Monnickendam suggests nothing so little as a 
naval engagement. People live there, it is true, but one 
sees very few of them. Only in an old English market 
town on a hot day — such a town as Petworth, for example, 
in Sussex — do you get such desertion and quiet and im- 
perturbability. Monnickendam has, however, a treasure 
that few English towns can boast — its charming little 
stadhuis tower, one of the prettiest in Holland, with a 
happy peal of bells, and mechanical horses in action once 
an hour ; while the tram line running right down the main 
street periodically awakens the populace. 

When last I visited Monnickendam it was by steam- tram ; 
and at a little half-way station, where it is necessary to 
wait for another tram, our engine driver, stoker and guard 
were elaborately photographed by an artist who seemed to 
be there for no other purpose. He placed his tripod on 
the platform ; grouped the officials ; gave them — and inci- 
dentally a score of heads protruding from the carriages — 
a sufficient exposure, and was preparing another plate when 
an incoming tram dashed up so unexpectedly as to cause 
him to jump, and, in jumping, to overturn his tripod and 
precipitate the camera under the carriage wheels. Now 



200 EDAM 

here was a tragedy worthy of serious treatment. A French- 
man would have danced with rao'e ; an Englishman would 
have wanted to know whose fault it was and have threat- 
ened reprisals. But the Dutchman merely looked a little 
pained, a little surprised, and in a minute or two was pre- 
paring a friendly group of the officials of the tram which 
had caused the accident, I do not put the incident for- 
ward as typical ; but certainly one may travel far in Hol- 
land without seeing exhibitions of temper. I mentioned 
the nation's equability to the young Dutchman in the canal 
boat between Rotterdam and Delft. " Ah ! " he said, 
" you should go to Brabant. They fight enough there ! " 
I did go to Brabant, but I saw no anger or quarrelsome- 
ness ; yet I suppose he had his reasons. 

The steam-tram to Monnickendam runs on to Edam, 
whence one may command both Volendam and Pm-merend. 
Edam is famous for its cheese, but the traveller in Holland 
as a rule reserves for Alkmaar cheese market his interest in 
this industry ; and we will do the same. Broadly speaking 
Edam sends forth the red cheeses, Alkmaar the yellow : but 
no hard and fast line can be drawn. Were it not for its 
cheese market Edam would be as " dead " as Monnicken- 
dam, but cheese saves it. It was once a power and the 
water-gate of Amsterdam, at a time w^hen the only way to 
the Dutch capital was by the Zuyder Zee and the Y. 
Edam is at the mouth of the Y, its name really being 
Ydam. The size of its Groote Kerk indicates something 
of this past importance, for it is immense : a Gothic build- 
ing of the fourteenth century, cold and drear enough, but 
a little humanised by some coloured glass from Gouda, often 
in very bad condition. In the davs when this church was 
built Edam had twenty-five thousand inhabitants : now 
there are only five thousand. 



THREE PERSONAGES 201 

It is difficult to lose the feeling of disproportion between 
the size of the Dutch churches and that of the villages 
and congregations. The villages are so small, the churches 
so vast. It is as though the churches were built to com- 
pensate for the absence of hills. From any one spire in 
Holland one must be able to see almost all the others. 

The stained glass in Edam's great church has reference 
rather to Holland's temporal prosperity than to religion. 
More interesting is the room over the southern door, which 
was used first for a prison, and later for a school, the library 
of which still may be seen. Edam possesses in addition to 
the immense church of St. Nicholas a little church of the 
Virgin, with a spire full of bells, badly out of the per- 
pendicular. The town has also some interesting old houses, 
one or two of great beauty, and many enriched by quaint 
bas-reliefs. 

The stadhuis is comparatively modern and not extern- 
ally attractive. Within, however, Edam does honour to 
three fantastic figures who once were to be seen in her 
streets— Peter Dircksz, Jan Cornellissen and Trijntje Kever, 
portraits of whom grace the town hall. Their claims to 
fame are certainly genuine, although unexpected. Peter's 
idiosyncrasy was a beard which had to be looped up to pre- 
vent it trailing in the mud ; Jan, at the age of forty-two, 
when the artist set to work upon him, weighed thirty-two 
stones and six pounds; while Trijntje was a maiden nine 
feet tali and otherwise ample. Peter and Trijntje were, 
I believe, true children of Edam, but Jan was a mere im- 
port, having conveyed his bulk thither from Friesland. 
Like our own Daniel Lambert, he kept an inn. One of 
Trijntje's shoes is also preserved— liker to a boat than 
anything else. 

I have by no means exhausted Edam's roll of honour. 



20a THE MERMAID 

Shipowner Osterlen must be added — a burgher, who, in 
1682, when his portrait was painted, could point (and in 
the canvas does point, with no uncertain finger,) to ninety- 
two ships of which he was the possessor. And a legend of 
Edam tells how once in 1403, when the country was inun- 
dated by the sea, some girls taking fresh water to the cows 
saw and captured a mermaid. Her (like the lady in Mr. 
Wells's story) they dressed and civilised, and taught to sow 
and spin, but could never make talk. Possibly it is this 
mermaid who, caught in a fisherman's net, is represented 
in bas-relief (as the fish that pleases all tastes) on one of 
the facades of Edam, with accompanying verses which 
must not be translated, embodying comments upon the 
nature of the haul by various typical and very plain-spoken 
members of society — a soldier and a schoolmaster, a monk 
and a fowler, for example. 

Edam has yet another hero. On the Dam bridge are 
iron-backed benches which never grow rusty. " One owes 
this particularity," says Through Noord- Holland, " to the 
invention of an Edamer about 1569, who also took his 
secret with him into the grave." 

To the little fishing village of Volendam, paradise of 
quaint costumes and gay prettinesses, artists invariably 
resort. Like much of Monnickendam, and indeed almost 
all Dutch seaside settlements, the village is, if not below 
sea-level, almost invisible from the water, on account of 
an obliterating dyke. At the Helder one can consider 
the rampart reasonable, but here, where there is no foe 
but the Zuyder Zee, it may seem fantastic. If we lived 
there in winter, however, the precaution would soon be 
justified, for the Zuyder Zee can on occasion roar like a lion. 
It is odd to reflect that Volendam, Monnickendam and 
Marken may become ordinary inland hamlets in the midst 



VOLENDAM AND PURMERENB 20S 

of gi'een fields if the great scheme for draining the 
Zuyder Zee is carried through. 

If the people and village of Volendam are to be described 
in a phrase, they may be called better Markeners in a 
better Marken. The decoration of the pointed red-roofed 
houses is similar; there is the same prevailing and very 
ingratiating passion for blue Delft — and a very beautiful 
blue too ; the clothes of the men and women have a family 
resemblance. But Volendam is in every way better — 
although its open drain is a sore trial : it is more human, 
more natural. The men hold the record for Dutch taci- 
turnity. They also smoke more persistently and wear larger 
sabots than I saw anywhere else, leaving them outside their 
doors with a religious exactitude that suggests that the good- 
wives of Volendam know how to be obeyed. The women 
discard the Marken ringlets and richness of embroidery, but 
in the matter of petticoats they approach the Scheveningen 
and Huizen standards. Their jewellery resolves itself into 
a coral necklace, while the men wear silver buttons — both 
coming down from mother to daughter, and father to son. 

The fishing fleet of Volendam sails as far as the North 
Sea, but it is always in Volendam by Saturday morning. 
Hence if you would see the Volendam fishermen in their 
greatest strength the time to visit the little town is at the 
end of the week or on Sunday. 

The day for Purmerend is Tuesday, because then the 
market is held, in the castle plein, among mediaeval sur- 
roundings. To this market the neighbourhood seems to 
send its whole population, by road and water, in gay cart 
and comfortable wherry. According to my unfailing in- 
formant in these regions, the Purmerend stadhuis, in 
order "to aggrandise the cheese market," was in 1633 
" set back a few meters by sere wing-force ". 



204 WINDMILLS AND GREEN PAINT 

The excursion to Marken and the excursion to Edam 
and its neighbourhood take each a day; but between 
Amsterdam and Zaandam, just off the great North Canal, 
steamers ply continually, and one may be there in half an 
hour. The journey must be made, because Zaandam is 
superficially the gayest town in Holland and the capital of 
windmill land. In an hour's drive (obviously no excursion 
for Don Quixote) one may pass hundreds. These mills do 
everything except grind corn. For the most part the 
Dutch mills pump : but they also saw wood, and cut 
tobacco, and make paper, and indeed perform all the tasks 
for which in countries less windy and less leisurely steam 
or water power is employed. The one windmill in Holland 
which always springs to my mind when the subject is 
mentioned is, however, not among Zaandam's legions : it 
is that solitary and imposing erection which rises from 
the water in the Coolsingel in Rotterdam. That is my 
standard Dutch mill. Another which I always recall 
stands outside Bergen-op-Zoom, on the way to Tholen — 
all white. 

The Dutch mill dilFers from the English mill in three 
important respects : it is painted more gaily (although for 
England white paint is certainly best) ; it has canvas on 
, its sails ; and it is often thatched. Dutch thatching is 
very smooth and pretty, like an antelope's skin ; and never 
more so than on the windmills. 

Zaandam lies on either side of the river Zaan, here 
broad and placid and north of the dam more Hke the 
Thames at Teddington, say, than any stretch of water in 
Holland. A single street runs beside the river for about 
a mile on both banks, the houses being models of smil- 
ing neatness, picked out with cheerful green paint. At 
Zaandam green paint is at its greenest. It is the national 



PETER THE GREAT 205 

pigment ; but nowhere else in Holland have they quite so 
sure a hand with it. To the critics who lament that there 
is no good Dutch painting to-day, I would say "Go to 
Zaandam". Not only is Zaandam's green the greenest, 
but its red roofs are the reddest, in Holland. A single 
row of trees runs down each of its long streets, and on 
the other side of each are illimitable fields intersected by 
ditches which on a cloudless afternoon might be strips of 
the bluest ribbon. 

We sat for an hour in the garden of " De Zon," a little 
inn on the west bank half-way between the dam and the 
bridge. The landlady brought us cofFee, and with it letters 
from other travellers who had liked her garden and had 
written to tell her so. These she read and purred over, as 
a good landlady is entitled to do, while we watched the 
barges float past and disappear as the distant lock opened 
and swallowed them. 

South of the dam the interest is centred in the hut where 
for a while in 1697 Peter the Great lived to see how the 
Dutchmen built their ships. The belief that no other 
motive than the inspection of this very uninteresting 
cottage could bring a stranger hither is a tenet of faith 
to which the Zaandamer is bound with shackles of iron. 
The moment one disembarks the way to Peter's residence 
begins to be pointed out. Little boys run before ; sturdy 
men walk beside ; old men (one with a wooden leg) struggle 
behind. It was later that the Czar crossed to England and 
worked in the same way at Deptford ; but no visitor to 
Deptford to-day is required to see his lodging there. 

The real interest of Zaandam is not its connection with 
Peter the Great but the circumstance that it was the birth- 
place of Anton Mauve, in 1838. He died at Arnheim in 
1888. Neither Zaandam nor Arnheim honours him. 



CHAPTER XIV 

ALKMAAR AND HOORN, THE HELDER AND ENKHUISEN 

To Alkmaar by canal — The Cheese Market — The Weigh House clock — 
Buyers and sellers — The siege of Alkmaar — To Hoorn by sea — A 
Peaceful harbour — Hoorn's explorer sons — John Haring's bravery 
— The defeat of De Bossu — Negro heroes — Hoorn's streets — and 
museum — Market day — and Kermis — Nieuwediep — The Helder — 
The Lighthouse— Hotel characters — The praise of the porter — Texel 
— Medemblik — King Radbod's hesitancy — Enkhuisen — Paul Potter 
— Sir William Temple and the old philosopher — The Dromedary. 

IF the weather is fine one should certainly go to Alkmaar 
by canal. The journey by water, on a steamer, is 
always interesting and intensely invigorating. It is only 
one remove from the open sea, so flat is the country, so free 
the air. 

Alkmaar's magnet is its cheese market, which draws little 
companies of travellers thither every Friday in the season. 
To see it rightly one must reach Alkmaar on the preced- 
ing afternoon, to watch the arrival of the boats from the 
neighbouring farms, and see them unload their yellow freight 
on the market quay. The men who catch the cheeses are 
exceedingly adroit — it is the nearest thing to an English 
game that is played in Holland. Before they are finally 
placed in position the cheeses are liberally greased, until 
they glow and glitter like orange fires. All the after- 
noon the boats come in, with their collections from the 
various dairies on the water. By road also come cheeses 

(206) 



^~ 




CHEKSK M\RKP:r, ALKAIAAk 



BARGAINS 207 

in wagons of light polished wood painted blue within ; and 
all the while the carillon of the beautiful grave Weigh 
House is ringing out its little tunes — the wedding march 
from " Lohengrin " among them — and the little mechanical 
horsemen are charging in the tourney to the blast of the 
little mechanical trumpeter. At one o'clock they run only 
a single course ; but at noon the glories of Ashby-de-la- 
Zouche are enacted. 

By nine o'clock on the Friday morning the market 
square is covered with rectangular yellow heaps arranged 
with Dutch systematic order and symmetry, many of them 
protected by tarpaulins, and the square is filled also with 
phlegmatic sellers and buyers, smoking, smoking, unceas- 
ingly smoking, and discussing the weather and the cheese, 
the cheese and the Government. 

Not till ten may business begin. Instantly the first 
stroke of ten sounds the aspect of the place is changed. 
The Government and the weather recede ; cheese emerges 
triumphant. Tarpaulins are stripped off; a new expres- 
sion settles upon the features both of buyers and sellers ; 
the dealers begin to move swiftly from one heap to an- 
other. They feel the cheeses, pat them, listen to them, 
plunge in their scoops and remove a long pink stick which 
they roll in their fingers, smell or taste and then neatly 
replace. Meanwhile, the seller stands by with an air part 
self-satisfaction, part contempt, part pity, part detachment, 
as who should say " It matters nothing to me whether this 
fussy fellow thinks the cheese good or not, buys it or not ; 
but whether he thinks it good or bad, or whether he buys, 
or leaves it, it is still the best cheese in Alkmaar market, 
and some one will give me my price ". 

The seller gnaws his cigar, the buyer asks him what he 
asks The buyer makes an oifer. The seller refuses. The 



208 ALKMAAR 

buyer increases it. The seller either refuses or accepts. 
In accepting, or drawing near acceptance, he extends his 
hand, which the buyer strikes once, and then pausing, 
strikes again. Apparently two such movements clench 
the bargain ; but I must confess to being a bad guide here, 
for I could find no absolute rule to follow. The whole 
process of Alkmaar chaffering is exceedingly perplexing 
and elusive. Otherwise the buyer walks away to other 
cheeses, the seller by no means unconscious of his move- 
ments. A little later he returns, and then as likely as not 
his terms are accepted, unless another has been beforehand 
with him and bought the lot. 

Not until half-past ten strikes may the weighing begin. 
At that hour the many porters suddenly spring into 
activity and hasten to the Weigh House with their loads, 
which are ticketed off by the master of the scales. 

The scene is altogether very Dutch and very interesting ; 
and one should make a point of crossing the canal to get 
a general view of the market, with the river craft in the 
foreground, the bustling dealers behind, and above all the 
elaborate tower and facade of the Weigh House. 

Alkmaar otherwise is not of great interest. It has a 
large light church, bare and bleak according to custom, 
with very attractive green curtains against its whitewash, 
in which, according to the author of Through Noord- 
Holland^ is a tomb containing " the entrails of Count 
Florence the Fifth ". Here also is a model of one of De 
Ruyter's ships. Alkmaar also possesses a charming Oude 
Mannen en Oude Vrouwen Huis (or alms house, as we 
say) with white walls and a very pretty tower ; quiet, 
pleasant streets ; and on its outskirts a fine wood called 
the Alkmaar der Hout. 

In the Museum, which is not too interesting, is a picture 



THE SIEGE 209 

of the siege of Alkmaar, an episode of which the town has 
every right to be proud. It was the point of attack by 
the Duke of Alva and his son after the conquest of 
Haarlem — that hollow victory for Spain which was more 
costly than many defeats. Philip had issued a decree 
threatening the total depopulation of Holland unless its 
cities submitted to the charms of his attractive religion. 
The citizens of Alkmaar were the first to defy this proclama- 
tion. Once again Motley comes to our aid with his vivid 
narrative : " The Spaniards advanced, burned the village of 
Egmont to the ground as soon as the patriots had left it, 
and on the 21st of August Don Frederic, appearing before 
the walls, proceeded formally to invest Alkmaar. In a 
few days this had been so thoroughly accomplished, that, 
in Alva's language, ' it was impossible for a sparrow to 
enter or go out of the city'. The odds were somewhat 
unequal. Sixteen thousand veteran troops constituted the 
besieging force. Within the city were a garrison of eight 
hundred soldiers, together with thirteen hundred burghers, 
capable of bearing arms. The rest of the population con- 
sisted of a very few refugees, besides the women and 
children. Two thousand one hundred able-bodied men, 
of whom only about one-third were soldiers, to resist six- 
teen thousand regulars ! 

"Nor was there any doubt as to the fate which was 
reserved for them, should they succumb. The Duke was 
vociferous at the ingratitude with which his clemency had 
hitherto been requited. He complained bitterly of the 
ill success which had attended his monitory circulars ; re- 
proached himself with incredible vehemence, for his previous 
mildness, and protested that, after having executed only 
twenty-three hundred persons at the surrender of Haarlem, 
besides a few additional burghers since, he had met with 
14 



210 ALVA ON KINDNESS 

no coiTespondent demonstrations of affection . He promised 
himself, however, an ample compensation for all this in- 
gratitude in the wholesale vengeance which he purposed 
to wreck upon Alkmaar. Already he gloated in anticipa- 
tion over the havoc which would soon be let loose within 
those walls. Such ravings, if invented by the pen of 
fiction, would seem a puerile caricature ; proceeding, au- 
thentically, from his own, they still appear almost too 
exaggerated for belief. ' If I take Alkmaar,' he wrote to 
Philip, ' I am resolved not to leave a single creature alive ; 
the knife shall be put to every throat. Since the example 
of Harlem has proved of no use, perhaps an example of 
cruelty will bring the other cities to their senses.' He 
took occasion also to read a lecture to the party of con- 
ciliation in Madrid, whose counsels, as he believed, his 
sovereign was beginning to heed. Nothing, he maintained, 
could be more senseless than the idea of pardon and 
clemency. This had been sufficiently proved by recent 
events. It was easy for people at a distance to talk 
about gentleness ; but those upon the spot knew better. 
Gentleness had produced nothing', so far ; violence alone 
could succeed in future. 'Let your Majesty,' he said, 'be 
disabused of the impression, that with kindness anything 
can be done with these people. Already have matters 
reached such a point that many of those born in the 
country, who have hitherto advocated clemency, are now 
undeceived, and acknowledge their mistake. They are of 
opinion that not a living soid shoidd be left in Alkmaar, 
but that every individual should be put to the sword.\ . . 
" Affairs soon approached a crisis within the beleaguered 
city. Daily skirmishes, without decisive result, had taken 
place outside the walls. At last, on the 18th of September, 
after a steady cannonade of nearly twelve hours, Don 



REPULSE 211 

Frederic at three in the afternoon, ordered an assault. 
Notwithstanding his seven months' experience at Haarlem, 
he still believed it certain that he should carry Alkmaar 
by storm. The attack took place at once upon the Frisian 
gate, and upon the red tower on the opposite side. Two 
choice regiments, recently arrived from Lombardy, led the 
onset, rending the air with their shouts, and confident of 
an easy victory. They were sustained by what seemed 
an overwhelming force of disciplined troops. Yet never, 
even in the recent history of Haarlem, had an attack been 
received by more dauntless breasts. Every living man was 
on the walls. The storming parties were assailed with 
cannon, with musketry, with pistols. Boiling water, pitch 
and oil, molten lead, and unslaked lime, were poured 
upon them every moment. Hundreds of tarred and burn- 
ing hoops were skilfully quoited around the necks of the 
soldiers, who struggled in vain to extricate themselves from 
these fiery ruiFs, while as fast as any of the invaders planted 
foot upon the breach, they were confronted face to face 
with sword and dagger by the burghers, who hurled them 
headlong into the moat below. 

"Thrice was the attack renewed with ever-increasinff 
rage — thrice repulsed with unflinching fortitude. The 
storm continued four hours long. During all that period, 
not one of the defenders left his post, till he dropped from 
it dead or wounded. The women and children, unscared 
by the balls flying in every direction, or by the hand-to- 
hand conflicts on the ramparts, passed steadily to and fro 
from the arsenals to the fortifications, constantly supplying 
their fathers, husbands, and brothers with powder and 
ball. Thus, every human being in the city that could 
walk had become a soldier. At last darkness fell upon the 
scene. The trumpet of recall was sounded, and the Span- 



«ia THE SPANIARDS IN REVOLT 

iards, utterly discomfited, retired from the walls, leaving 
at least one thousand dead in the trenches, while only 
thirteen burghers and twenty-four of the garrison lost 
their lives. Thus was Alkmaar preserved for a little 
longer — thus a large and well-appointed army signally 
defeated by a handful of men fighting for their firesides 
and altars. Ensign Solis, who had mounted the breach 
for an instant, and miraculously escaped with life, after 
having been hurled from the battlements, reported that he 
had seen ' neither helmet nor harness,' as he looked down 
into the city ; only some plain-looking people, generally 
di'essed like fishermen. Yet these plain-looking fishermen 
had defeated the veterans of Alva. . . . 

"The day following the assault, a fresh cannonade was 
opened upon the city. Seven hundred shots having been 
discharged, the attack was ordered. It was in vain ; neither 
threats nor entreaties could induce the Spaniards, hitherto 
so indomitable, to mount the breach. The place seemed 
to their imagination protected by more than mortal powers, 
otherwise how was it possible that a few half-starved fisher- 
men could already have so triumphantly overthrown the 
time-honoured legions of Spain. It was thought, no doubt, 
that the Devil, whom they worshipped, would continue to 
protect his children. Neither the entreaties nor the 
menaces of Don Frederic were of any avail. Several 
soldiers allowed themselves to be run through the body 
by their own officers, rather than advance to the walls, 
and the assault was accordingly postponed to an indefinite 
period." 

What seemed at first an unfortunate accident turned 
the scale. A messenger bearing despatches from the 
Prince of Orange fell into Spanish hands and Don Frederic 
learned that the sea was to be let in. Motley continues : 



WATER TO THE RESCUE 213 

" The resolution taken by Orange, of which Don Frederic 
was thus unintentionally made aware, to flood the country 
far and near rather than fail to protect Alkmaar, made a 
profound impression upon his mind. It was obvious that 
he was dealing with a determined leader, and with desper- 
ate men. His attempt to cany the place by storm had 
signally failed, and he could not deceive himself as to the 
temper and disposition of his troops ever since that re- 
pulse. When it should become known that they were 
threatened with submersion in the ocean, in addition to 
all the other horrors of war, he had reason to believe that 
they would retire ignominiously from that remote and 
desolate sand hook, where, by remaining, they could only 
find a watery gi-ave. These views having been discussed in 
a council of officers, the result was reached that sufficient 
had been ah'eady accomplished for the glory of the Spanish 
arms. Neither honour nor loyalty, it was thought, re- 
quired that sixteen thousand soldiers should be sacrificed 
in a contest, not with man, but with the ocean. 

" On the 8th of October, accordingly, the siege, which 
had lasted seven weeks, was raised, and Don Frederic re- 
joined his father in Amsterdam. Ready to die in the last 
ditch, and to overwhelm both themselves and their foes in 
a common catastrophe, the Hollanders had at last com- 
pelled their haughty enemy to fly from a position which 
he had so insolently assumed." 

Every one is agreed that Hoorn should be approached 
by water, because it rises from the sea like an enchanted 
city of the East, with its spires and its Harbour Tower 
beautifully unreal. And as the ship comes nearer there 
is the additional interest of wondering how the apparently 
landlocked harbour is to be entered, a long gi*een bar 
seeming to stretch unbrokenly from side to side. At the 



214 ^ THE BLESSED HORN 

last minute the passage is revealed, and one glides into this 
romantic port. I put Hoorn next to Middelburg in the 
matter of charm, but seen from the sea it is of greater 
fascination. In many ways Hoorn is more remarkable 
as a town, but more of my heart belongs to Middel- 
burg. 

I sat on the coping of the harbour at sundown and 
watched a merry party dining in the saloon of a white 
and exceedingly comfortable-looking yacht, some thii'ty 
or forty yards away. Two neat maids continually passed 
from the galley to the saloon, and laughter came over the 
water. The yacht was from Arnheim, its owner having 
all the appearance of a retu'ed East Indian official. In the 
distance was a tiny sailing boat with its sail set to catch 
what few puffs of wind were moving. Its only occupant 
was a man in crimson trousers, the reflection from which 
made little splashes of warm colour in the pearl grey sea. 
At Hoorn there seems to be a tendency to sail for pleasure, 
for as we came away a party of chattering girls glided out 
in the care of an elderly man — bound for a cruise in the 
Zuyder Zee. 

It is conjectured that Hoorn took its name from the 
mole protecting the harbour, which might be considered 
to have the shape of a horn. The city as she used to be 
(now dwindled to something less, although the cheese 
industry makes her prosperous enough and happy enough) 
was called by the poet Vondel the trumpet and capital of 
the Zuyder Zee, the blessed Horn. He referred particu- 
larly to the days of Tromp, whose ravaging and victorious 
navy was composed largely of Hoorn ships. 

Cape Horn, at the foot of South America, is the name- 
child of the Dutch port, for the first to discover the passage 
round that headland and to give it its style was Willem 



JOHN HARING 215 

Schouten, a Hoorn sailor. It was another Hoorn sailor, 
Abel Tasman, who discovered Van Diemen's Land (now 
called after him) and also New Zealand ; and a third, Jan 
Pieters Coen (whose statue may be seen at Hoorn) who 
founded the Dutch dominions in the East Indies, and 
thus changed the whole character of his own country, 
leading to that orientalising to which I have so often 
referred. 

A more picturesque hero was John Haring of Hoorn, 
who performed a great feat in 1572, when De Sonoy, the 
Prince of Orange's general, was fighting De Bossu, the 
Spanish Admiral, off the Y, just at the beginning of the 
siege of Haarlem. An unexpected force of Spaniards from 
Amsterdam overwhelmed the few men whom De Sonoy 
had mustered for the defence of the Diemerdyk. I quote 
Motley's account : " Sonoy, who was on his way to their 
rescue, was frustrated in his design by the unexpected faint- 
heartedness of the volunteers whom he had enlisted at Edam. 
Braving a thousand perils, he advanced, almost unattended, 
in his little vessel, but only to witness the overthrow and 
expulsion of his band. It was too late for him singly to 
attempt to rally the retreating troops. They had fought 
well, but had been forced to yield before superior numbers, 
one individual of the little army having performed prodigies 
of valour. John Haring, of Hoorn, had planted himself 
entirely alone upon the dyke, where it was so narrow 
between the Y on the one side and Diemer Lake on 
the other, that two men could hardly stand abreast. Here, 
armed with sword and shield, he had actually opposed 
and held in check one thousand of the enemy, during 
a period long enough to enable his own men, if they 
had been willing, to rally, and effectively to repel the 
attack. It was too late, the battle was too far lost to 



216 A SEA FIGHT 

be restored ; but still the brave soldier held the post, 
till, by his devotion, he had enabled all those of his com- 
patriots who still remained in the entrenchments to make 
good their retreat. He then plunged into the sea, and, 
untouched by spear or bullet, effected his escape. Had 
he been a Greek or a Roman, a Horatius or a Chabras, 
his name would have been famous in history — his statue 
erected in the market-place ; for the bold Dutchman on his 
dyke had manifested as much valour in a sacred cause as the 
most classic heroes of antiquity." 

Then came the siege of Haarlem, and then the siege 
of Alkmaar. Hoorn's turn followed, but Hoorn was 
gloriously equal to it in the hands of Admiral Dirckzoon, 
whose sword is in the Alkmaar museum, and whose tomb 
is at Delft. Motley shall tell the story : " On the 11th 
October, however, the whole patriot fleet, favored by a 
strong easterly breeze, bore down upon the Spanish armada, 
which, numbering now thirty sail of all denominations, 
was lying off and on in the neighbourhood of Hoorn and 
Enkhuyzen. After a short and general engagement, 
nearly all the Spanish fleet retired with precipitation, 
closely pursued by most of the patriot Dutch vessels. 
Five of the King's ships were eventually taken, the rest 
effected their escape. Only the Admiral remained, who 
scorned to yield, although his forces had thus basely 
deserted him. His ship, the ' Inquisition,' for such was her 
insolent appellation, was far the largest and best manned of 
both the fleets. Most of the enemy had gone in pursuit of 
the fugitives, but four vessels of inferior size had attacked the 
'Inquisition ' at the commencement of the action. Of these, 
one had soon been silenced, while the other three had 
grappled themselves inextricably to her sides and prow. 
The four drifted together, before wind and tide, a severe 



JOHN HARING AGAIN 217 

and savage action going on incessantly, during which the 
navigation of the ships was entirely abandoned. No 
scientific gunnery, no military or naval tactics were dis- 
played or required in such a conflict. It was a life-and- 
death combat, such as always occurred when Spaniard 
and Netherlander met, whether on land or water. Bossu 
and his men, armed in bullet-proof coats of mail, stood 
with shield and sword on the deck of the ' Inquisition,' ready 
to repel all attempts to board. The Hollander, as usual, 
attacked with pitch hoops, boiling oil, and molten lead. 
Repeatedly they effected their entrance to the Admiral's 
ship, and as often they were repulsed and slain in heaps, or 
hurled into the sea. 

" The battle began at three in the afternoon, and con- 
tinued without intermission through the whole night. 
The vessels, drifting together, struck on the shoal called 
the Nek, near Wydeness. In the heat of the action the 
occurrence was hardly heeded. In the morning twilight, 
John Haring, of Hoorn, the hero who had kept one thousand 
soldiers at bay upon the Diemer dyke, clambered on board 
the ' Inquisition,' and hauled her colors down. The gallant 
but premature achievement cost him his life. He was shot 
through the body and died on the deck of the ship, which 
was not quite ready to strike her flag. In the course of 
the forenoon, however, it became obvious to Bossu that 
further resistance was idle. The ships were aground near 
a hostile coast, his own fleet was hopelessly dispersed, three- 
quarters of his crew were dead or disabled, while the 
vessels with which he was engaged were constantly re- 
cruited by boats from the shore, which brought fresh men 
and ammunition, and removed their killed and wounded. 
At eleven o'clock Admiral Bossu surrendered, and with 
three hundred prisoners was carried into Holland. Bossu 



218 DE RUYTER'S NEGROES 

was himself imprisoned at Hoorn, in which city he was 
received, on his arrival, with oTeat demonstrations of 
popular hatred." 

De Bossu remained in prison for three years. Later 
he fought for the States. His goblet is preserved at 
Hoorn. His collar is at Monnickendam and his sword 
at Enkhuisen. 

The room in the Protestant orphanage where De Bossu 
was imprisoned is still to be seen ; and you may see also 
at the corner of the Grooteoost the houses fi'om which the 
good wives and housekeepers watched the progress of the 
battle, and on which a bas-relief representation of the 
battle was afterwards placed in commemoration. 

Two more heroes of Hoorn may be seen in effigy on the 
fa9ade of the State College, opposite the Weigh House, 
guarding an English shield. The shield is placed there, 
among the others, on account of a daring feat performed 
by two negro sailors in De Ruyter's fleet in the Thames, 
who ra\ished from an English ship in distress the shield 
at her stem and presented it to Hoorn, their adopted 
town, where it is now supported by bronze figures of its 
captors. 

Hoorn's streets are long and cheerful, with houses graci- 
ously bending forwards, many of them dignified by black 
paint and yet not made too grave by it. This black paint 
blending^ with the many trees on the canal sides has the 
same curious charm as at Amsterdam, although there the 
blackness is richer and more absolute. Even the Hoorn 
warehouses are things of beauty : one in particular, by the 
Harbom- Tower, with bright green shutters, is indescribably 
gay, almost coquettish. Hoorn also has the most satisfying 
little houses I saw in Holland — streets of them. And of all 
the costumes of Holland I remember most vividly the dead 



DARNLEY AND MARY 219 

black dress and lace cap of a woman who suddenly turned 
a corner here — as if she had walked straight fi^om a picture 
by Elias. 

The Harbour Tower is perhaps Hoorn's finest building, 
its charm being intensified rather than diminished by the 
hideous barracks close by. St. Jan's Gasthuis has a fa9ade 
of beautiful gravity, and the gateway of the home for 
Ouden Vrouwen is perfect. The museum in the Tribunals- 
hof is the most intimate and human collection of curiosities 
which I saw in Holland — not a fossil, not a stuffed bird, 
in the building. Among the pictures are the usual groups 
of soldiers and burgomasters, and the usual fine deter- 
mined De Ruyter by Bol. We were shown Hoorn's 
ti'easures by a pleasant gu'l who allowed no shade of tedium 
to cross her smiling courteous face, although the display 
of these ancient pictures and implements, ornaments and 
domestic articles must have been her daily work for years. 
In the top room of all is a curious piece of carved stone 
on which may be read these inscriptions : — 

This most illustrious Prince, 

Henry Lord Darnley, King of Scotland, 

Father to our Soveraigne Lord King James. 

He died at the age of 21. 

The most excellent Princesse Marie, Queen of Scotland, 
Mother of our Soveraigne, Lord King James. 
She died 1586, and entombed at West Minster. 

It would be interestinc^ to know more of this memorial. 

In another room are two carved doors from a house in 
Hoorn that had been disfurnished which give one a very 
vivid idea of the old good taste of this people and the little 
palaces of grave art in which they lived. 

Thursday is Hoorn's market day, and it is important to 



220 THE LIGHTHOUSE 

be there then if one would see the market carts of North 
Holland in abundance. We had particularly good fortune 
since our Thursday was not only market day but the 
Kermis too. I noticed that the principal attraction of the 
fail*, for boys, was the stalls (unknown at the Kermis both 
at Middelburg and Leyden) on which a variety of flat cake 
was chopped with a hatchet. The chopper, who I under- 
stand is entitled only to what he can sever with one blow, 
often fails to get any. 

Nieuwediep and The Helder, at the extreme north of Hol- 
land, are one, and interesting only to those to whom naval 
works are interesting. For they are the Portsmouth and 
Woolwich of the country. My memories of these twin 
towns are not too agreeable, for when I was there in 1897 
the voyage from Amsterdam by the North Holland canal 
had chilled me through and through, and in 1904 it rained 
without ceasing. Nieuwediep is all shipping and sailors, 
cadet schools and hospitals. The Helder is a dull town, 
with the least attractive architecture I had seen, cowering 
beneath a huge dyke but for which, one is assured, it would 
lie at the bottom of the North Sea. Under rain it is a 
drearier town than any I know ; and ordinarily it is bleak 
and windy, saved only by its kites, which are flown from 
the dyke and sail over the sea at immense heights. Every 
boy has a kite — one more link between Holland and China. 

I climbed the lighthouse at The Helder just before the 
lamp was lit. It was an impressive ceremony. The 
captain and his men stood all ready, the captain watching 
the sun as it sunk on the horizon. At the instant it dis- 
appeared he gave the word, and at one stride came the 
light. I chanced at the moment to be standing between 
the lantern and the sea, and I was asked to move with an 
earnestness of entreaty in which the safety of a whole navy 



F-^^-* . ..^>,'f'M^■i 




MARKET PLACE WEIGHHOUSE- HOORN 



POET AND BARITONE 221 

seemed to be involved. The light may be seen forty-eight 
miles away. It is fine to think of all the eyes within that 
extent of sea, invisible to us, caught almost simultaneously 
by this point of flame. 

I did not stay at Nieuwediep but at The Helder. Thirty 
years ago, however, one could have done nothing so in- 
artistic, for then, according to M. Havard, the Hotel Ten 
Burg at Nieuwediep had for its landlord a poet, and for 
its head waiter a baritone, and to stay elsewhere would 
have been a crime. Here is M. Havard's description of 
these virtuosi : " No one ever sees the landlord the first day 
he arrives at the hotel. M. B. R. de Breuk is not acces- 
sible to ordinary mortals. He lives up among the clouds, 
and when he condescends to come down to earth he shuts 
himself up in his own room, where he indulges in pleasant 
intercourse with the Muses. 

" I have no objection to confessing that, although I am 
a brother in the art, and have stayed several times at his 
hotel, I have never once been allowed to catch a glimpse 
of his features. The head- waiter, happily, is just the 
contrary. It is he who manages the hotel, receives travel- 
lers, and arranges for their well-being. He is a handsome 
fellow, with a fresh complexion, heavy moustache, and one 
lock of hair artificially arranged on his forehead. He is 
perfectly conscious of his own good looks, and wears rings 
on both his hands. Nature has endowed him with a 
sonorous baritone voice, the notes of which, whether sharp 
or melodious, he is careful in expressing, because he is 
charmed with his art, and has an idea that it is fearfully 
egotistical to conceal such treasures. One note especially 
he never fails to utter distinctly, and that is the last — 'the 
note of payment. 

" Sometimes he allows himself to become so absorbed in 



2^2 HOTEL PORTERS 

his art that he forgets the presence in the hotel of tired 
travellers, and disturbs their slumbers by loud roulades 
and cadences ; or perhaps he is asked to fetch a bottle of 
beer, he stops on the way to the cellar to perfect the har- 
mony of a scale, and does not return till the patience 
of the customer is exhausted. But who would have the 
heart to complain of such small grievances when the love 
of song is stronger than any other ? " 

I had no such fortune in Holland. No hotel proprietor 
rhymed for me, no waiter sang. My chief friends were 
rather the hotel porters, of whom I recall in particular 
two — the paternal colossus at the Amstel in Amsterdam, 
who might have sat for the Creator to an old master — 
urbane, efficient, a storehouse of good counsel ; and the 
plump and wide cynic into whose capable and kindly hands 
one falls at the Oude Doelen at The Hag^ue, that shrewd 
and humorous reader of men and Americans. I see yet his 
expression of pity, not wholly (yet perhaps sufficiently) 
softened to polite interest, when consulted as to the best 
way in which to visit Alkmaar to see the cheese market. 
That any one staying at The Hague — and more, at the 
Oude Doelen — should wish to see traffic in cheese at a 
provincial town still strikes his wise head as tragic, although 
it happens every week. I honour him for it and for the 
exquisite tact with which he retains his opinion and allows 
you to have yours. 

A poet landlord and an operatic head waiter, what are 
they when all is said beside a friendly hotel porter ? He 
is the Deus ex machind indeed. The praises of the hotel 
porter have yet to be sung. O Switzerland ! the poet might 
begin (not, probably, a landlord poet) O Switzerland — I 
give but a bald paraphrase of the spirited original — -O 
Switzerland, thou land of peaks and cow bells, of wild 



RADBOD'S DOUBTS S23 

strawberries and nonconformist conventions, of grasshoppers 
and climbing dons, thou hast strange limitations ! Thou 
canst produce no painter, thou possessest no navy ; but 
thou makes t the finest hotel porters in the world. Erect, 
fair-haired, blue-eyed, tactful and informing, they are the 
true friends of the homeless ! — And so on for many 
strophes. 

To Texel I did not cross, although it is hard for any one 
who has read The Riddle of the Sands to refrain. Had we 
been there in the nesting season I might have wandered in 
search of the sea birds' and the plovers' eggs, just for old 
sake's sake, as I have in the island of Coll, but we were 
too late, and The Helder had depressed us. It was oiF the 
Island of Texel on 31st July, 1653, that Admiral Tromp 
was killed during his engagement with the English under 
Monk. 

Medemblik, situated on the point of a spur of land 
between The Helder and Enkhuisen, was once the residence 
of Radbod and the Kings of Frisia. It is now nothing. 
One good story at any rate may be recalled there. When 
Radbod, King of the Frisians, was driven out of Western 
Frisia in 689 by Pepin of Heristal, Duke and Prince of the 
Franks (father of Charles Martel and great grandfather of 
Charlemagne, who completed the conquest of Frisia), the 
defeated king was considered a convert to Christianity, and 
the preparations for his baptism were made on a grand 
scale. Never a whole-hearted convert, Radbod, even as one 
foot was in the water, had a visitation of doubt. Where, 
he made bold to ask, were the noble kings his ancestors, 
who had not, like himself, been offered this inestimable 
privilege of baptism — in heaven or in hell ? The officiating 
Bishop replied that they were doubtless in hell. " Then," 
said Radbod, withdrawing his foot, " I think it would be 



224 PAUL POTTER 

better did I join them there, rather than go alone to 
Paradise." 

Enkhuisen, where one embarks for Friesland, is a Dead 
City of the Zuyder Zee, with more signs of dissolution 
than most of them. Once she had a population of sixty 
thousand ; that number must now be divided by ten. 

"Above all things," says M. Havard, the discoverer of 
Dead Cities, "avoid a promenade in this deserted town 
with an inhabitant familiar with its history, otherwise you 
will constantly hear the refrain ; ' Here was formerly the 
richest quarter of commerce ; there, where the houses are 
falling into total ruin, was the quarter of our aristocracy.' 
But more painful still, when we have arrived at what ap- 
pears the very end of the town, the very last house, we see 
at a distance a gate of the city. A hundred years ago 
the houses joined this gate. It took us a walk of twenty 
minutes across the meadows to arrive at this deserted spot." 
I did not explore the town, and therefore I cannot speak 
with any authority of its possessions ; but I saw enough 
to realise what a past it must have had. 

At Enkhuisen was born Paul Potter, who painted the 
famous picture of the bull in the Mauritshuis at The Hague. 
The year 1625 saw his birth ; and it was only twenty-nine 
years later that he died. While admiring Potter's technical 
powers, I can imagine few nervous trials more exacting 
than having to hve with his bull intimately in one's room. 
This only serves to show how temperamental a matter is 
art criticism, for on each occasion that I have been to the 
Mauritshuis the bull has had a ring of mute or throbbing 
worshippers, while Vermeer's " View of Delft " was without 
a devotee. I have seen, however, little scenes of cattle by 
Potter which were attractive as well as masterly. 

Sir William Temple, in his Observations upon the 



A PHILOSOPHER 225 

United Provinces gives a very human page to this old 
town : " Among the many and various hospitals, that are 
in every man's curiosity and talk that travels their country, 
I was affected with none more than that of the aged seamen 
at Enchuysen, which is contrived, finished, and ordered, as 
if it were done with a kind intention of some well-natured 
man, that those, who had passed their whole lives in the 
hardships and incommodities of the sea, should find a retreat 
stored with all the eases and conveniences that old ao-e is 
capable of feeling and enj oying. And here I met with the 
only rich man that ever I saw in my life : for one of these 
old seamen entertaining me a good while with the plain 
stories of his fifty years' voyages and adventures, while I was 
viewing their hospital, and the church adjoining, I gave 
him, at parting, a piece of their coin about the value of a 
crown : he took it smiling, and offered it me again ; but, 
when I refused it, he asked me, What he should do with 
money ? for all, that ever they wanted, was provided for 
them at their house. I left him to overcome his modesty 
as he could ; but a servant, coming after me, saw him give 
it to a little girl that opened the church door, as she passed 
by him : which made me reflect upon the fantastic calcula- 
tion of riches and poverty that is current in the world, by 
which a man, that wants a million, is a Prince ; he, that 
wants but a groat, is a beggar ; and this a poor man, that 
wanted nothing at all." 

Hoorn's Harbour Tower, as I have said, has a charm 
beyond description ; but Enkhuisen's — known as the 
Dromedary — is unwieldly and plain. It has, however, 
this advantage over Hoorn's, its bells are very beauti- 
ful. One sees the Dromedary for some miles on the 
voyage to Stavoren and Friesland. 



CHAPTER XV 

FRIESLAND: STAVOREN TO LEEUWARDEN 

Enkhuisen to Stavoren — Draining the Zuyder Zee — The widow and 
the sandbank — Frisian births and courtships — Hindeloopen — Quaint 
rooms and houses — A pious pun — Biers for all trades — Sneek — Barge 
life — Two giants — Bolsward — The cow — A digression on the weed. 

THE traveller from Amsterdam enters Free Frisia at 
Stavoren, once the home of kings and now a mere 
haven. A little steamer carries the passengers from Enk- 
huisen, while the cattle trucks and vans of merchandise 
cross the Zuyder Zee in a huge railway raft. The steamer 
takes an hour or a little longer — time enough to have lunch 
on deck if it is fine, and watch Enkhuisen fading into 
nothingness and Stavoren rising from the sea. 

Before the thirteenth century the Zuyder Zee consisted 
only of Lake Flevo, south of Stavoren and Enkhuisen, 
so that our passage then would have been made on land. 
But in 1282 came a great tempest which drove the German 
ocean over the north-west shores of Holland, insulating Texel 
and pouring over the low land between Holland and Fries- 
land. The scheme now in contemplation to drain the Zuy- 
der Zee proposes a dam from Enkhuisen to Piaam, thus re- 
claiming some 1,350,000 acres for meadow land. Since what 
man has done man can do, there is little doubt but that 
the Dutch will carry through this great project. 

Concerning Stavoren there is now but one thing to say, 
(226) 




% - 




THE WIDOW'S CORN 227 

and no writer on Holland has had the temerity to avoid 
saying it. That thing is the story of the widow and the 
sandbank. It seems that at Stavoren in its palmy days 
was a wealthy widow shipowner, who once gave instructions 
to one of her captains, bound for a foreign port, that he 
should bring back the most valuable and precious thing to 
be found there, in exchange for the outward cargo. The 
widow expected I know not what — ivory, perhaps, or pea- 
cocks, or chrysoprase — and when the captain brought only 
grain, she was so incensed that, though the poor of Stavo- 
ren implored her to give it them, she bade him forthwith 
throw it overboard. This he did, and the corn being cursed 
there sprang up on that spot a sandbank which gradually 
ruined the harbour and the town. The bank is called The 
Widow's Corn to this day. 

It was near Stavoren that M. Havard engaged in a 
pleasant and improving conversation with a lock-keeper 
who had fought with France, and from him learned some 
curious things about Friesiand customs. I quote a little : 
" When a wife has given birth to a boy and added a son 
to Friesiand, all her female friends come to see her and 
drink in her room the hrandewyii, which is handed round 
in a special cup or goblet. Each woman brings with her a 
large tart, all of which are laid out in the room — sometimes 
they number as many as thirty. The more there are and 
the finer the cakes the better, because that proves the number 
of friends. A few days later the new-born Frieslander is 
taken to church, all the girls from twelve years old accom- 
panying the child and carrying it each in turn. As soon 
as they reach the church the child is handed to the father, 
who presents it for baptism. Not a girl in the place would 
renounce her right to take part in the little procession, for 
it is a subject of boasting when she marries to be able to 



228 THE FIRE OF LOVE 

say, 'I have accompanied this and that child to its bap- 
tism '. Besides, it is supposed to ensure happiness, and that 
she in her turn will have a goodly number of little ones. 

" ' Well and how about betrothals ? ' ' Ah ! ha ! that's 
another thing. The girl chooses the lad. You know the 
old proverb, ' There are only two things a girl chooses her- 
self — her potatoes and her lover'. You can well imagine 
how such things begin. They see each other at the kermis, 
or in the street, or fields. Then one fine day the lad feels 
his heart beating louder than usual. In the evening he puts 
on his best coat, and goes up to the house where the girl lives. 

" The father and mother give him a welcome, which the 
girls smile at, and nudge each other. No one refers to 
the reason for his visit, though of course it is well known 
why he is there. At last, when bedtime comes, the children 
retire — even the father and mother go to their room — and 
the girl is left alone at the fireside with the young man. 

" They speak of this and that, and everything, but not a 
word of love is uttered. If the girl lets the fire go down, 
it is a sign she does not care for the lad, and won't have 
him for a husband. If, on the contrary, she heaps fuel on 
the fire, he knows that she loves him and means to accept 
him for her affianced husband. In the first case, all the 
poor lad has to do is to open the door and retire, and 
never put his foot in the house again. But, in the other, 
he knows it is all right, and from that day forward he is 
treated as if he belonged to the family.' 

" ' And how long does the engagement last ? ' 

" ' Oh, about as long as everywhere else — two, three 
years, more or less, and that is the happiest time of their 
lives. The lad takes his girl about everywhere ; they go 
to the Tiermis, skate, and amuse themselves, and no one 
troubles or inquires about them. Even the girl's parents 



cows 229 

allow her to go about with her lover without asking any 
questions.' " 

A Dutch proverb says, "Take a Brabant sheep, a 
Guelderland ox, a Flemish capon and a Frisian cow ". 
The taking of the Frisian cow certainly presents few diffi- 
culties, for the surface of Friesland is speckled thickly with 
that gentle animal — ample in size and black and white in 
hue. The only creatures that one sees from the carriage 
windows on the railway journey are cows in the fields and 
plovers above them. Now and then a man in his blue 
linen coat, now and then a heron ; but cows always and 
plovers always. Never a bullock. The meadows of 
Holland are a female republic. Perkin Middlewick (in 
Our Boys) had made so much money out of pork that 
whenever he met a pig he was tempted to raise his hat ; 
the Dutch, especially of North Holland and Friesland, 
should do equal homage to their friend the cow. Edam 
acknowledges the obligation in her municipal escutcheon. 

Stavoren may be dull and unalluring, but not so Hinde- 
loopen, the third station on the railway to Leeuwarden, 
where we shall stay. At Hindeloopen the journey should be 
broken for two or three hours. Should, nay must. Hinde- 
loopen (which means stag hunt) has been called the Museum 
of Holland. All that is most picturesque in Dutch furni- 
ture and costume comes from this little town — or professes 
to do so, for the manufacture of spurious Hindeloopen 
cradles and stoofjes, chairs and cupboards, is probably a 
recognised industry. 

In the museum at Leeuwarden are two rooms arranged 
and furnished exactly in the genuine Hindeloopen manner, 
and they are exceedingly charming and gay. The smaller 
of the two has the ordinary blue and white Dutch tiles, 
with scriptural or other subjects, around the walls to the 



230 HINDELOOPEN 

height of six feet ; above them are pure white tiles, to the 
ceiling, with an occasional delicate blue pattern. The 
floor is of red and brown tiles. All the furniture is painted 
very gaily upon a cream or Avhite background — with a 
gaiety that has a touch of the Orient in it. The bed is 
hidden behind painted woodwork in the wall, like a berth, 
and is gained by a little flight of movable steps, also 
radiant. I never saw so happy a room. On the wall is 
a cabinet of curios and silver ornaments. 

The larger room is similiar but more costly. On the 
wall are fine Delft plates, and seated at the table are wax 
Hindelo openers : a man with a clay pipe and tobacco box, 
wearing a long flowered waistcoat, a crossed white neck- 
cloth and black coat and hat — not unhke a Quaker in 
festival attire ; and his neat and very picturesque women 
folk are around him. In the cradle, enshrined in ornamen- 
tations, is a Hindeloopen baby. More old silver and 
shining brass here and there, and the same resolute cheer- 
fulness of colouring everywhere. Some of the houses in 
which such rooms were found still stand at Hindeloopen. 

The Dutch once liked puns, and perhaps still do so. 
Again and again in their old inscriptions one finds experi- 
ments in the punning art. On the church of Hindeloopen, 
for example, are these lines : — 

Des heeren woord 
Met aandacht hoort 
Komt daartoe met hoopen 
Als hinden loopen. 

The poet must have had a drop of Salvationist blood in 
his veins, for only in General Booth's splendid followers do 
we look for such spirited invitations. The verses call upon 
worshippers to run together like deer to hear the word of 
God. 




THE SPINNER 

NICOLAS MAES 
Frojii the pictii7-e iti the Ryks Musei 



BARGE LIFE 231 

Within the great church, among other interesting 
things, are a large number of biers. These also are deco- 
rated according to the pretty Hindeloopen usage, one for 
the dead of each trade. Order even in death. The Hin- 
deloopen baker who has breathed his last must be carried 
to the grave on the bakers' bier, or the proprieties will 
wince. 

After Hindeloopen the first town of importance on the 
way to Leeuwarden is Sneek ; and Sneek is not important. 
But Sneek has a water-gate of quaint symmetrical charm, 
with two little spires — the least little bit like the infant 
child of the Amsterdam Gate at Haarlem. In common 
with so many Frisian towns Sneek has suffered from flood. 
A disastrous inundation overwhelmed her on the evening 
of All Saints' Day in 1825, when the dykes were broken 
and the water rushed in to the height of five feet. Such 
must be great times of triumph for the floating popula- 
tion, who, like the sailor in the old ballad of the sea, may 
well pity the unfortunate and insecure dwellers in houses. 
What the number of Friesland's floating population is I 
do not know ; but it must be very large. Many barges 
and tjalcks are both the birthplace and deathplace of their 
owners, who know no other home. The cabins are not 
less intimately cared for and decorated than the sitting- 
rooms of Volendam and Mark en. 

We saw at Edam certain odd characters formed in 
Nature's wayward moods. Sneek also possessed a giant 
named Lange Jacob, who was eight feet tall and the 
husband of Korte Jannetje (Little Jenny), who was just 
half that height. People came from great distances to 
see this couple. And at Sneek, in the church of St. 
Martin, is buried a giant of more renown and prowess — 
Peter van Heemstra, or " Lange Pier " as he was called 



EAST AND WEST MEET 

from his inches, a sea ravener of notable ferocity, whose 
two-handed sword is preserved at Leeuwarden — although, 
as M. Havard says, what useful purpose a two-handed sword 
can serve to an admiral on a small ship baffles reflection. 

Bolsward, Sneek's neighbour, is another amphibious 
town, with a very charming stadhuis in red and white, 
crowned by an Oriental bell tower completely out of keep- 
ing with the modern Frisian who hears its voice. This 
constant occurrence of Oriental freakishness in the archi- 
tecture of Dutch towns, in contrast with Dutch occidental 
four-square simplicity and plainness of character, is an 
effect to which one never quite grows accustomed. 

Bolsward's church, which is paved with tomb-stones, 
among them some very rich ones in high rehef — too high 
for the comfort of the desecrating foot — has a fine carved 
pulpit, some oak stalls of great antiquity and an imposing 
bell tower. 

It is claimed that the Frisians were the first Europeans 
to smoke pipes. Whether or not that is the case, the 
Dutch are now the greatest smokers. Recent statistics 
show that whereas the annual consumption of tobacco by 
every inhabitant of Great Britain and Ireland is 1'34 lb., 
and of Germany 3 lb., that of the Dutch is 7 lb. Putting 
the smoking population at 30 per cent, of the total — 
allowing thus for women, children and non-smokers — this 
means that every Dutch smoker consumes about eight ounces 
of tobacco a week, or a little more than an ounce a day. 

I excepted women and children, but that is wrong. The 
boys smoke too — sometimes pipes, oftenest cigars. At a 
music hall at The Hague I watched a contest in generosity 
between two friends in a family party as to which should 
supply a small boy in sailor suit, evidently the son of the 
host, with a cigar. Both won. 



PROPHYLACTIC TOBACCO 233 

Fell, writing in 1801, says that the Dutch, although 
smoke dried, were not then smoking so much as they had 
done twenty years before. The Dutchmen, he says, " of 
the lower classes of society, and not a few in the higher 
walks of life, carry in their pockets the whole apparatus 
which is necessary for smoking : — a box of enormous size, 
which frequently contains half a pound of tobacco ; a pipe 
of clay or ivory, according to the fancy or wealth of the 
possessor ; if the latter, instruments to clean it ; a pricker 
to remove obstructions from the tube of the pipe ; a cover 
of brass wire for the bowl, to prevent the ashes or sparks 
of the tobacco from flying out ; and sometimes a tinder- 
box, or bottle of phosphorus, to procure fire, in case none 
is at hand. 

"The excuse of the Dutch for their lavish attachment 
to tobacco, in the most offensive form in which it can be 
exhibited, is, that the smoke of this transatlantic weed pre- 
serves them from many disorders to which they are liable 
from the moisture of the atmosphere of their country, and 
enables them to bear cold and wet without inconvenience." 

Fell supports this curious theory by relating that when, 
soaked by a storm, he arrived at an inn at Overschie, the 
landlord offered him a pipe of tobacco to prevent any bad 
consequences. Fell, however, having none of his friend 
Charles Lamb's affection for the friendly traitress, declined 
it with asperity. 

Ireland has an ingenious theory to account for the 
addiction of the Dutch to tobacco. It is, he says, the 
succedaneum to purify the unwholesome exhalations of 
the canals. "A Dutchman's taciturnity forbids his com- 
plaining ; so that all his waking hours are silently employed 
in casting forth the filthy puff of the weed, to dispel the 
more filthy stench of the canal." 



234 CIGARS 

Ireland's view was probably an invention ; but this I 
know, that the Dutch cigar and the Dutch atmosphere 
are singularly well adapted to each other. I brought 
home a box of a brand which was aoTeeable in Holland, 
and they were unendurable in the sweet air of Kent. 

The cigar is the national medium for consuming tobacco, 
cigarettes being practically unknown, and pipes rare in 
the streets. My experience of the Dutch cigar is that it 
is a very harmless luxury and a very persuasive one. After 
a little while it becomes second nature to drop into a 
tobacconist's and slip a dozen cigars into one's pocket, at 
a cost of a few pence ; and the cigars being there, it is 
another case of second nature to smoke them practically 
continuously. Of these cigars, which range in price from 
one or two cents to a few pence each, there are hundreds 
if not thousands of varieties. 

The number of tobacconists in Holland must be very 
great, and the trade is probably strong enough to resist 
effectually the impost on the weed which was recently 
threatened by a daring Minister, if ever it is attempted. 
The pretty French custom of giving tobacco licences to 
the widows of soldiers is not adopted here ; indeed I do 
not see that it could be, for the army is only 100,000 
strong. In times of stress it might perhaps be advisable 
to send the tobacconists out to fight, and keep the soldiers 
to mind as many of their shops as could be managed, 
shutting up the rest. 



CHAPTER XVI 

LEEUWARDEN AND NEIGHBOURHOOD 

An agricultural centre — -A city of prosperity and health — The fair Frisians 
— Metal head-dresses — Silver work — The Chancellerie — A paradise 
of blue china — Jumping poles — The sea swallow — A Sunday ex- 
cursion — Dogs for England — The idie busybodies — The stork — A 
critical village — The green crop — The dyke — A linguist — Harlingen 
— A Dutch picture collector — Franeker — The Planetarium — Dokkum's 
bad reputation — A discursive guide-book — Bigamy punished — A hus- 
band-tamer — Boxum's record — Sjuck's short way — The heroic Bauck 
— A load of exorcists — Poor Lysse. 

IN an hour or two the train brings us to Leeuwarden, 
between flat green meadows unreHeved save for the 
frequent isolated homesteads, in which farm house, dairy, 
barn, cow stalls and stable are all under one great roof 
that starts almost from the ground. On the Essex flats 
the homesteads have barns and sheltering trees to keep 
them company : here it is one house and a mere hedge 
of saplings or none at all. For the rest — cows and plovers, 
plovers and cows. 

Friesland's capital, Leeuwarden, might be described as an 
English market town, such as Horsham in Sussex, scoured 
and carried out to its highest power, rather than a small 
city. The cattle trade of Friesland has here its head- 
quarters, and a farmer needing agricultural implements 
must fare to Leeuwarden to buy them. The Frisian farmer 

(235) 



S36 THE FAIR FRISIANS 

certainly does need them, for it is his habit to take three 
crops of short hay off his meadows, rather than one crop 
of long hay in the English manner. 

Not only cattle but also horses are sold in Leeuwarden 
market. The Frisian horse is a noble animal, truly the 
friend of man ; and the Frisians are fond of horses and 
indulge both in racing and in trotting — or " hardraverij " 
as they pleasantly call it. I made a close friend of a Frisian 
mare on the steamer from Rotterdam to Dort. At Dort 
I had to leave her, for she was bound for Nymwegen. A 
most charming creature. 

Leeuwarden is large and prosperous and healthy. What 
one misses in it is any sense of intimate cosiness. One seems 
to be nearer the elements, farther from the ingratiating 
works of man, than hitherto in any Dutch town. The 
strong air, the openness of land, the 180 degrees of sky, the 
northern sharpness, all are far removed from the solace of 
the chimney corner. It is a Spartan people, prefemng 
hard health to overcoats ; and the streets and houses re- 
flect this temperament. They are clean and strong and 
bare — no huddling or niggling architectm-e. Everything 
also is bright, the effect largely of paint, but there must 
be something very antiseptic in this Frisian atmosphere. 

The young women of Leeuwarden — the fair Frisians — 
are tall and strong and fresh looking ; not exactly beauti- 
ful but very pleasant. "There go good wives and good 
mothers," one says. Their Amazonian air is accentuated 
by the casque of gold or silver which fits tightly over their 
heads and gleams through its lace covering : perhaps the 
most curious head-dress in this country of elaborate head- 
dresses, and never so curious as when, on Sundays, an 
ordinary black bonnet, bristling with feathers and jet, is 
mounted on the top of it. That, however, is a refinement 




CLARA ALEWIJN 

DIRCK SANTVOORT 
From the picticre ui the Ryks Mus:z 



THE CHANCELLERIE 237 

practised only by the middle-aged and elderly women : the 
young women wear either the casque or a hat, never both. 
If one climbs the Oldehof and looks down on the city on a 
sunny day — as I did — the glint of a metal casque continu- 
ally catches the eye. These head-dresses are of some value, 
and are handed on from mother to daughter for genera- 
tions. No Dutch woman is ever too poor to lay by a little 
jewellery ; and many a domestic servant carries, I am told, 
twenty pounds worth of goldsmith's work upon her. 

Once Leeuwarden was famous for its goldsmiths and 
silversmiths, but the interest in precious metal work is not 
what it was. Many of the little silver ornaments — the 
windmills, and houses, and wagons, and boats — which once 
decorated Dutch sitting-rooms as a matter of course, and 
are now prized by collectors, were made in Leeuwarden. 

The city's architectural jewel is the Chancellerie, a 
very ornate but quite successful building dating from the 
sixteenth century : first the residence of the Chancellors, 
recently a prison, and now the Record Office of Friesland. 
Not until the Middelburg stadhuis shall we see anything 
more cheerfully gay and decorative. The little Weigh 
House is in its own way very charming. But for gravity 
one must go to the Oldehof, a sombre tower on the 
ramparts of the city. Once the sea washed its very walls. 

To the ordinary traveller the most interesting things in 
the Leeuwarden museum, which is opposite the Chancel- 
leiie, are the Hindeloopen rooms which I have described 
in the last chapter ; but to the antiquary it offers great 
entertainment. Among ancient relics which the spade has 
revealed are some very early Frisian tobacco pipes. Among 
the pictures, for the most part very poor, is a dashing 
Carolus Duran and a very beautiful little Daubigny. 

Affiliated to the museum is one of the best collections 



238 THE SEA SWALLOW 

of Delft china in Holland — a wonderful banquet of blue. 
This alone makes it necessary to visit Leeu warden. 

All about Leeuwarden the boys have jumping poles for 
the ditches, and you may see dozens at a time, after school, 
leaping backwards and forwards over the streams, like frogs. 
Childi-en abound in Friesland : the towns are filled with 
boys and girls ; but one sees few babies. In Holland the 
very old and the very young are alike invisible. 

One of the first things that I noticed at Leeuwarden 
was the presence of a new bird. Hitherto I had seen 
only the familiar birds that we know at home, except 
for a stork here and there and more herons than one 
catches sight of in England save in the neighbourhood 
of one of our infrequent heronries. But at Leeuwarden 
you find, sweeping and plaining over the canals, the beauti- 
ful tern, otherwise known as the sea swallow, white and 
powerful and delicately graceful, and possessed of a double 
portion of the melancholy of birds of the sea. Of the 
bittern, which is said to boom continually over the Fries- 
land meres, I caught no glimpse and heard no sound. 

From Leeuwarden I rode one Sunday morning by the 
steam-tram to St. Jacobie Parochie, a little village in the 
extreme north-west, where I proposed to take a walk 
upon the great dyke. It was a chilly morning, and I 
was glad to be inside the compartment as we rattled along 
the road. The only other occupant was a young minister 
in a white tie, puffing comfortably at his cigar, which in 
the manner of so many Dutchmen he seemed to eat as he 
smoked. For a while we were raced — and for a few yards 
beaten — by two jolly boys in a barrow drawn by a pair 
of gallant dogs who foamed past us ventre a terre with six 
inches of flapping tongue. 

The introduction into England of dogs as beasts of 



OUR THREE NATIONS 239 

draught would I suppose never be tolerated. A score of 
humanitarian societies would spring into being to prevent 
it : possibly with some reason, for one has little faith in 
the considerateness of the average English costermonger or 
barrow-pusher. And yet the dog-workers of the Nether- 
lands seem to be cheerful beasts, wearing their yoke very 
easily. I have never seen one, either in Holland or 
Belgium, obviously distressed or badly treated. Why 
the English dog should so often be a complete idier, and 
his brother across the sea the useful ally of man, is an 
ethnological problem : the reason lying not with the 
animals but with the nations. The Flemish and Dutch 
people are essentially humble and industrious, without 
ambitions beyond their station. The English are a dis- 
satisfied folk who seldom look upon their present position 
as permanent. The English dog is idle because his master, 
always hoping for the miracle that shall make him idle 
too, does not really set his hand to the day's work and 
make others join him; the Netherlandish dog is busy 
because his master does not believe in sloth, and having 
no illusions as to his future, knows that only upon a 
strenuous youth and middle age can a comfortable old age 
be built. Countries that have not two nations — the idle 
and rich and the poor and busy — as we have, are, I think, 
greatly to be envied. Life is so much more genuine 
there. 

England indeed has three nations : the workers, the 
idle rich who live only for themselves, and the idle rich 
or well-to-do who live also for others — in other words 
the busybodies. The third nation is the real enemy, 
for an altruist who has time on his hands can do enormous 
mischief between breakfast and lunch. It is this class 
that would at once make it impossible for a strong dog 



240 THE STORK AGAIN 

to help in drawing a poor man's barrow. The opportunity 
would be irresistible to them. The resolutions they would 
pass ! The votes of thanks to the lieutenant-colonels in 
the chair ! 

It was on this little journey to St. Jacobie Parochie 
that I saw my first stork. Storks' nests there had been 
in plenty, but all were empty. But at Wier, close to St. 
Jacobie Parochie, was a nest on a pole beside the road, 
and on this nest was a stork. The Dutch, I think, have 
no more endearino^ trait than their kindness to this bird. 
Once at any rate their solicitude was grotesque, although 
serviceable, for Ireland tells of a young stork with a broken 
leg for which a wooden leg was substituted. Upon this 
jury limb the bird lived happily for thirty years. 

The stork alone among Dutch birds is sacred, but he 
is not alone in feeling secure. The fowler is no longer a 
common object of the country, as he seems to have been 
in Albert Cuyp's day, when he returned in the golden 
evening laden with game — for Jan Weenix to paint. 

St. Jacobie Parochie on a fine Sunday morning is no 
place for a sensitive man. The whole of the male popula- 
tion of the village had assembled by the church — not, I 
fancy, with any intention of entering it — and every eye 
among them probed me like a corkscrew. It is an out of 
the world spot, to which it is possible no foreigner ever 
before penetrated, and since their country was a show to 
me I had no right to object to serve as a show to them. 
But such scrutiny is not comfortable. I hastened to the 
sea. 

One reaches the sea by a path across the fields to an 
inner dyke with a high road upon it, and then by another 
footpath, or paths, beside green ditches, to the ultimate 
dyke which holds Neptune in check. As I walked I was 



FROGS AND A LINGUIST 241 

continually conscious of heavy splashes just ahead of me, 
which for a while I put down to water-rats. But chancing 
to stand still I was presently aware of the proximity of a 
huge green frog, the largest I have ever seen, who sat, 
solid as a paper weight, close beside me, with one eye 
glittering upon me and the other upon the security of the 
water, into which he jumped at a movement of my hand. 
Walking then more warily I saw that the banks on either 
side were populous with these monsters ; and sometimes it 
needed only a flourish of the handkerchief to send a dozen 
simultaneously into the ditch. I am glad we have not 
such frogs at home. A little frog is an adorable creature, 
but a frog half-way to realising his bovine ambition is 
a monster. 

The sea dyke is many feet high. Its lowest visible 
stratum is of black stones, beneath the sea-level ; then a 
stratum of large red bricks; then turf. The willow 
branches are invisible, within. The land hereabout is un- 
doubtedly some distance below sea-level, but it is impos- 
sible either here or anywhere in Holland to believe in the 
old and venerable story of the dyke plugged by an heroic 
thumb to the exclusion of the ocean and the safety of the 
nation. 

As I lay on the bank in the sun, listening to a thousand 
larks, with all Friesland on one hand and the pearl grey sea 
on the other, a passer-by stopped and asked me a question 
which I failed to understand. My reply conveyed my 
nationality to him. "Ah," he said, "Eenghsh. Do it 
well with you ? " I said that it did excellently well. He 
walked on until he met half a dozen other men, some 
hundred yards away, when I saw him pointing to me and 
telling them of the long conversation he had been enjoying 
with me in my own difficult tongue. It was quite clear 
i6 



24^ HARLINGEN 

from their interest that the others were conscious of the 
honour of having a real Hnguist among them. 

Another day I went to Harhngen. I had intended to 
reach the town by steam-tram, but the time table was 
deceptive and the engine stopped permanently at a station 
two or three miles away. Fortunately, however, a curtained 
brake was passing, and into this I sprang, joining two 
women and a dominie, and together we ambled very de- 
liberately into the quiet seaport. Harlingen is a double 
harbour — ^inland and maritime. Barges from all parts of 
Friesland lie there, transferring their goods a few yards to 
the ocean-going ships bound for England and the world, 
although Friesland does not now export her produce as once 
she did. Thirty years ago much of our butter and beef 
and poultry sailed from Harlingen. 

The town lies in the savour of the sea. Masts rise above 
the houses, ship-chandlers' shops send forth the agreeable 
scent of tar and cordage, sailors and stevedores lounge 
against posts as only those that follow the sea can do. 
I had some beef and bread, in the Dutch midday 
manner, in the upper room of an inn overlooking the 
harbour, while two shipping-clerks played a dreary game 
of billiards. Beyond the dyke lay the empty grey sea, 
with Texel or Vlieland a faint dark line on the horizon. 
Nothing in the town suggested the twentieth century, or 
indeed any century. Time was not. 

I wish that Mr. Bos had been living, that I might have 
called upon him and seen his pictures, as M. Havard did. 
But he is no more, and I found no one to tell me of the 
fate of his collection. Possibly it is still to be seen : 
certainly other visitors to Harlingen should be more ener- 
getic than I was, and make sure. Here is M. Havard's 
account of Mr. Bos and an evening at his house : " Mr. Bos 




r* "' ' ' "*"» 



MR. BOS 243 

started in life as a farm-boy — then became an assistant in 
a shop. Instead of spending his money at the beer-houses 
he purchased books. He educated himself, and being pro- 
vident, steady, industrious, he soon collected sufficient 
capital to start in business on his own account, which he 
did as a small cheesemonger ; but in time his business 
prospered, and to such an extent that one day he awoke 
to find himself one of the greatest and richest merchants 
of Harlingen. 

" Many under these circumstances would have considered 
rest was not undeserved ; but Mr. Bos thought otherwise. 
He became passionately fond of the arts. Instead of pur- 
chasing stock he bought pictures, then the books necessary 
to understand them, and what with picking up an engraving 
here and a painting there he soon became possessed of a most 
interesting collection, and of an artistic knowledge sufficient 
for all purposes. But to appreciate the virtue (the term 
is not too strong) of this aimable man, one should know 
the difficulties he had to surmount before gaining his 
position. It is no joke when one lives in a town like 
Harlingen to act differently from other people. Tongues 
are as well hung there as in any small French town. 
Instead of encouraging this brave collector, they laughed 
at and ridiculed him. His taste for the arts was reo-arded 
as a mania. In fact, he w^as looked upon as a madman, and 
even to this day, notwithstanding his successful career, he is 
looked upon as no better than a lunatic. Happily a taste 
for art gives one joys that makes the remarks of fools 
and idiots pass like water off a duck's back. 

" When we called on Mr. Bos he was absent ; but as soon 
as Madame Bos was made acquainted with our names we 
received a most cordial reception. She is, however, a most 
charming woman, combining both amiability and affability. 



244 THE PLANETARIUM 

with a venerable appearance ; and, notwithstanding her im- 
mense fortune and gold plate, still wears the large Frison cap 
of the good old times. She was anxious to do the honours 
of the collection in person, and immediately sent for her 
son, so that we might receive every information. 

" Mr. Bos returned home the same evening, and at once 
came on board, and would not leave until we had promised 
to spend the evening at his house, which we did in the 
Frison fashion — that is to say, that whilst examining the 
pictures we were compelled to devour sundry plates of 
soesTirahelingen^ a kind of pastry eaten with cheese ; also 
to empty several bottles of old wine. 

" A slight incident that occurred shortly before our de- 
parture touched me greatly. 'You think, sir,' said Mr. 
Bos, ' that because I do not understand French, I have not 
read the books you have written on our National Arts. 
Pray undeceive yourself, for here is a translation of it.' 
The old gentleman then placed before me a complete manu- 
script translation of the work, which he had had made 
specially for himself." 

The special lion of Franeker, which I visited on my way 
back from Harlingen, is the Planetarium of Eisa Eisinga, a 
mathematician and wool-comber, who constructed it alone 
in his back parlour between 1774 and 1781. Interest 
in planetaria is, I should say, an acquired taste ; but 
there can be no doubt as to the industry and ingenuity of 
this inventor. The wonders of the celestial law are unfolded 
by a very tired young woman, whose attitude to the solar 
system is probably similar to that of Miss Jelly by to Africa. 
After her lecture one stumbles upstairs to see the clock- 
work which controls the spheres, and is then free once more. 

Franeker is proud also of her tombstones in the great 
church, but it is, I fancy, Eisa Eisinga whom she most ad- 



DOKKUM'S PUNISHMENT 245 

mires. She was once the seat of an honourable University, 
which Napoleon suppressed in 1811. Her learning gone, 
she remains a very pleasant and clean little town. By 
some happy arrangement all the painting seems to be done 
at once — so different from London, where a fresh facade 
only serves to emphasise a dingy one. But although the 
quality of the paint can be commended, the painters of 
Franeker are undoubtedly allowed too much liberty. They 
should not have been permitted to spread their colour on 
the statues of the stadhuis. 

The principal street has an avenue of elm trees down its 
midst, in the place where a canal would be expected ; but 
canals traverse the town too. Upon the deck of a peat 
barge I watched a small grave child taking steady and 
unsmiling exercise on a rocking horse. 

I did not go to Dokkum, which lies at the extreme north 
of Friesland. Mr. Doughty, the author of an interesting 
book of Dutch travel, called Friesland Meres — he was the 
first that ever burst into these silent canals in a Norfolk 
wherry — gives Dokkum a very bad character, and so do 
other travellers. It seems indeed always to have been an 
unruly and inhospitable town. As long ago as 853 it was 
resisting the entry of strangers. The strangers were Saint 
Boniface and his companion, whom Dokkum straightway 
massacred. King Pepin was furious and sent an army on 
a punitive mission; while Heaven supplemented Pepin's 
efforts by permanently stigmatising the people of the 
town, all the men thenceforward being marked by a white 
tuft of hair and all the women by a bald patch. 

At Leeu warden is a patriotic society know as the " Vere- 
enigung tot bevordering van vreemdelingenverkeer," whose 
ambition, as their title suggests, is to draw strangers to the 
town ; and as part of their campaign they have issued a 



246 FRISIAN POETRY 

little guide to Leeuwarden and its environs, in English. It 
is an excellent book. The preface begins thus : — 

The travelling-season, which causes thousands of people to leave their 
homes and hearths, has come round again. Throughout Europe silk strings 
are being prepared to catch human birds of passage with. Is Frisia — Old 
Frisia — to lag behind ? Impossible 1 Natural condition as well as popula- 
tion and history give to our province a right to claim a little attention and 
to be a hostess. We beg to refer to the words of a Frenchman, M. Malte- 
Brun (quoted by one of the best Frisian authors), the English translation 
of which words runs as follows : " Eighteen centuries saw the river Rhine 
change its course, and the Ocean swallow its shores, but the Frisian nation 
has remained unchanged, and from an historical point of view deserves 
being taken an interest in by the descendants of the Franks as well as of 
the Anglo-Saxons and the Scandinavians." 

It is not often to a Frenchman that the author of this 
guide has to go for his purple patches. He is capable of 
producing them himself, and there seems also always to be 
a Frisian poet who has said the right thing. Thus (of 
Leeuwarden) : "It is surrounded by splendid fertile meadows, 
to all of which, though especially to those lying near the 
roads to Marssum and Stiens, may be applied the words of 
the Frisian poet Dr. E. Halbertsma : — 

' Sjen noit dat Idn, hwer jy op geane, 
Dat ophelle is iit guile se ; 
Hwer hinne briisender Idnsdouwen, 
Oerspriede mei sok hearlik fe ? 

(' Behold the soil you are walking on, 
The soil, snatched from the waves ; 
Where are more luxurious meadows, 
Where do you find such cattle ? ') 

The farmer, living in the midst of this fine natural 
scenery, is to be envied indeed : if the struggle for life 
does not weigh too heavily upon him, his must be a life 
happier than that of thousands of other people. Living 
and working with his own family and servants attached to 




FAMILY SCENE 

JAN STEEN 
From iJii picture in thz Ryks hUtsetan 



A VIRAGO 247 

him, he made the right choice when he chose to breed his 
cattle and improve his grounds to the best of his power. 
The parlour-windows look out on the fields : the gay sight 
they grant has its effect on the mood of those inside. The 
peasant sees and feels the beauty of life, and it makes him 
thankful, and gives him courage to struggle and to work on, 
where necessity requires it." 

I gather from the account of Leeuwarden that the 
j ustices of that city once knew a crime when they saw one 
— none quicklier. In 1536, for example, they punished 
Jan Koekebakken in a twinkling for the dastardly offence 
of marrying a married woman. This was his sentence : — 

We command that the said Jan Koekebakken, prisoner, be conducted 
by the executioner from the Chancery to Brol-bridge, and that he be put 
into the pillory there. He shall remain standing there for two hours, 
with a spindle under each arm, and with the letter in which he pledged 
faith to the said Aucke Sij brant hanging from his neck. He shall 
remain for ever within the town of Leeuwarden, under penalty of death 
if he should leave it. 

Done and pronounced at Leeuwarden April 29th, 1536. 

But the best part of the guide-book is its rapid notes 
on the villages around Leeuwarden, to so many of which 
are curious legends attached. At Marssum, close at hand, 
was born the English painter of Roman life, Sir Lawrence 
Alma-Tadema. Here also was born the ingenious Eisa 
Eisinga, who constructed the Franeker planetarium in the 
intervals of wool-combing. At Menaldum lived Mrs. Van 
Camstra van Haarsma, a husband-tamer and eccentric, of 
whom a poet wrote : — 

She breaks pipe and glass and mug, 

When he speaks as suits a man ; 

And instead of being cross, 

He is gentler than a lamb. 

When in fury glow her eyes. 

He keeps silent . , . isn't he wise ? 



248 PROVERBS AND CHARACTERS 

When not hen-pecking her husband this powerful lady was 
rearing wild animals or corresponding with the Princess 
Caroline. 

At Boxum, was fought, on 17th January, 1586, hard 
by the church, the battle of Boxum, between the Span- 
iards and the Frisians. The Frisians were defeated, and 
many of them massacred in the church ; but their effort 
was very brave, and " He also has been to Boxum " is 
to this day a phrase applied to lads of courage. Another 
saying, given to loud speakers, is " He has the voice of the 
Vicar of Boxum," whose tones in the pulpit were so dulcet 
as to frighten the birds from the roof, and, I hope, sinners 
to repentance. 

At Jelsum is buried Balthazar Becker, the antagonist of 
superstition and author of The Enchanted World. Near 
by was Martena Castle, where Alderman Sjuck van Bur- 
mania once kept a crowd of assailants at bay by standing 
over a barrel of gunpowder with a lighted brand while 
he offered them the choice of the explosion or a feast. 
Hence the excellent proverb, " You must either fight or 
di'ink, said Sjuck ". 

At Berlikum was the castle of Bauck Poppema, a Frisian 
lady cast in an iron mould, who during her husband's 
absence in 1496 defended the stronghold against assailants 
from Groningen. Less successful than Sjuck, after re- 
pelling them thrice she was ovei-powered and thrown into 
prison. V^^hile there she produced twins, thus proving her- 
self a woman no less than a warrior. " When the people 
of Holland glorify Kenau," says the proverb, " the Frisians 
praise their Bauck." Kenau we have met: the heroic 
widow of Haarlem who during the siege led a band of three 
hundred women and repelled the enemy on the walls again 
and again. 



JUFFER LYSSE 249 

Near Roodkerk is a lake called the Boompoel, into which 
a coach and four containing six inside passengers, all of 
them professional exorcists, disappeared and was never seen 
again. The exorcists had come to relieve the village of the 
ghost of a miser, and we must presume had failed to quiet 
him. Near Bergum, at Buitenrust farm, is the scene of 
another tragedy by drowning, for there died JufFer Lysse. 
This maiden, disregarding too long her father's dying 
injunction to build a chapel, was naturally overturned in 
her carriage and drowned. Ever since has the wood been 
haunted, while the bind-weed, a haunting flower, is in 
these parts known as the JuiFer Lysse blom. 

From these scraps of old lore — all taken from the little 
Leeuwarden guide — it will be seen that Friesland is rich 
in romantic traditions and well worthy the attention of 
any maker of sagas. 



CHAPTER XVII 

GRONINGEN TO ZUTPHEN 

Fresh tea — Dutch meals — The Doelens — Groningen — Roman Catholic 
priests — The boys' penance — Luther and Erasmus — The peat 
country — Folk lore — Terburg— Thomas a Kempis — Zwolle — The 
wild girl — Kampen — A hall of justice indeed — An ideal holiday- 
place — The wiseacres — Urk — Sir Philip Sidney — Zutphen — The 
scripture class — The wax works — Dutch public morality. 

I REMEMBER the Doelen at Groningen for several 
reasons, all of them thoroughly material. (Holland 
is, however, a material country.) First I would put the 
very sensible custom of providing every guest who has 
ordered tea for breakfast with a little tea caddy. At the 
foot of the table is a boiling urn Jrom which one fills one's 
teapot, and is thus assured of tea that is fresh. So simple 
and reasonable a habit ought to be the rule rather than 
the exception : but never have I found it elsewhere. This 
surely is civilisation, I said. 

The Doelen was also the only inn in Holland where an 
inclusive bottle of claret was placed before me on the table ; 
and it was the only inn where I had the opportunity of eat- 
ing ptarmigan with stewed apricots — a very happy alUance. 

Good however as was the Groningen dinner, it was a 
Sunday dinner at the Leeuwarden Doelen whicli remains 
in my memory. This also is a friendly unspoiled northern 
inn, where the bill of fare is arranged with a nice thought 

(250) 



THE DOELENS 251 

to the requirements of the Free Frisian. I kept no note 
of the meal, but I recollect the occurrence at one stage of 
plovers' eggs (which the Dutch eat hot, dropping them into 
cold water for an instant to ensure the easy removal of the 
shell), and at another, some time later, of duckling with 
prunes. 

The popularity of the name Doelen as a Dutch sign 
might have a word of explanation. Doelen means target, 
or shooting saloon ; and shooting at the mark was a very 
common and useful recreation with the Dutch in the six- 
teenth century. At first the shooting clubs met only to 
shoot — as in the case of the arquebusiers in Rembrandt's 
"Night Watch," who are painted leaving their Doelen ; later 
they became more social and the accessories of sociability 
were added ; and after a while the accessories of sociability 
crowded out the shooting altogether, and nothing but an 
inn with the name Doelen remained of what began as a 
rifle gallery. 

At Groningen, which is a large prosperous town, and 
the birthplace both of Joseph Israels and H. W. Mesdag, 
cheese and dairy produce are left behind. We are now in 
the grain country. Groningen is larger than Leeuwarden 
— it has nearly seventy thousand inhabitants — and its 
evening light seemed to me even more beautifully liquid. 
I sat for a long time in a cafe overlooking the great 
square, feeding a very greedy and impertinent tenier, and 
alternately watching an endless game of billiards and the 
changing hue of the sky as day turned to night and the 
clean white stars came out. In Holland one can sit very 
long in cafes : I had dined and left a table of forty Dutch- 
men just settling down to their wine, at six o'clock, with 
the whole evening before me. 

Groningen takes very good care of itself. It has trams, 



252 LITTLE ROMANS 

excellent shops and buildings, a crowded inland harbour, 
and a spreading park where once were its fortifications. The 
mounds in this park were the first hills I had seen since 
Laren. The church in the market square is immense, with 
a high tower of bells that kept me awake, but had none 
of the soothing charm of Long John at Middelburg, whose 
praises it will soon be my privilege to sound. The onlv 
rich thing in the whitewashed vastnesses of the church is 
the organ, built more than four hundred years ago by 
Rudolph Agricola of this province. I did not hear it. 

At Groningen Roman Catholic priests become noticeable 
— so different in their styhsh coats, square hats and canes, 
from the blue-chinned kindly slovens that one meets in the 
Latin countries. (In the train near Nymwegen, however, 
where the priests wear beavers, I travelled with a humorous 
old voluptuary who took snuff at every station and was as 
threadbare as one likes a priest to be.) Looking into the 
new Roman Catholic church at Groningen I found a little 
company of restless boys, all eyes, from whom at regular 
intervals were detached a reluctant and perfunctory couple 
to do the Stations of the Cross. I came as something like 
a godsend to those that remained, who had no one to super- 
vise them ; and feeling it as a mission I stayed resolutely in 
the church long after I was tired of it, writing a little and 
examining the pictures by Hendriex, a modern painter too 
much after the manner of the Christmas supplement — 
studied the while by this band of scrutinising penitents. I 
hope I was as interesting and beguiling as I tried to be. 
And all the time, exactly opposite the Roman Catholic 
church, was reposing in the library of the L'niversity no 
less a treasure than the New Testament of Erasmus, with 
marginal notes by Martin Luther. There it lay, that 
afternoon, within call, while the weary boys pattered from 



^i 



PEAT 253 

one Station of the Cross to another, little recking the part 
played by their country in sapping the power of the faith 
they themselves were fostering, and knowing nothing of 
the ironical contiguity of Luther's comments. 

By leaving Groningen very early in the morning I 
gained another proof of the impossibility of rising before 
the Dutch. In England one can easily be the first down 
in any hotel — save for a sleepy boots or waiter. Not so in 
Holland. It was so early that I am able to say nothing of 
the country between Groningen and Meppel, the capital of 
the peat trade, save that it was peaty : heather and fir 
trees, shallow lakes and men cutting peat, as far as eye 
could reach on either side. 

Here in the peat country I might quote a very pretty 
Dutch proverb : " There is no fuel more entertaining than 
wet wood and frozen peat : the wood sings and the peat 
listens ". The Dutch have no lack of folk lore, but the 
casual visitor has not the opportunity of collecting very 
much. When there is too much salt in the dish they say 
that the cook is in love. When a three-cornered piece of 
peat is observed in the fire, a visitor is coming. When 
bread has large holes in it, the baker is said to have pur- 
sued his wife through the loaf. When a wedding morning 
is rainy, it is because the bride has forgotten to feed the 
cat. 

I tarried awhile at Zwolle on the Yssel (a branch of the 
Rhine), because at Zwolle was born in 1617 Gerard Terburg, 
one of the greatest of Dutch painters, of whom I have spoken 
in the chapter on Amsterdam's pictures. Of his life we 
know very little ; but he travelled to Spain (where he was 
knighted and where he learned not a little of use in his 
art), and also certainly to France, and possibly to England. 
At Haarlem, where he lived for a while, he worked in Frans 



^54 ZWOLLE 

Hals' studio, and then he settled down at Deventer, a few 
miles south of Zwolle, married, and became in time Burgo- 
master of the town. He died at Deventer in 1681. Zwolle 
has none of his pictures, and does not appear to value his 
memory. Nor does Deventer. How Terburg looked as 
Burgomaster of Deventer is seen in his portrait of himself 
in the Mauritshuis at The Hague. It was not often that 
the great Dutch painters rose to civic eminence. Rem- 
brandt became a bankrupt, Frans Hals was on the rates, 
Jan Steen drank all his earnings. Of all Terburg's great 
contemporaries Gerard Dou seems to have had most sense 
of prosperity and position; but his interests were wholly 
in his art. 

Terburg is not the only famous name at Zwolle. It was 
at the monastery on the Agneteberg, three miles away, that 
the author of The Imitation of Christ lived for more than 
sixty years and wrote his deathless book. 

I roamed through Zwolle's streets for some time. It 
is a bright town, with a more European air than many 
in Holland, agreeable drives and gardens, where (as at 
Groningen) were once fortifications, and a very fine old 
gateway called the Saxenpoort, with four towers and five 
spires and very pretty window shutters in white and blue. 
The Groote Kerk is of unusual interest. It is five hundred 
years old and famous for its very elaborate pulpit — a little 
cathedral in itself — and an organ. Zwolle also has an 
ancient church which retains its original religion — the 
church of Notre Dame, with a crucifix curiously protected 
by iron bars. I looked into the stadhuis to see a Gothic 
council room ; and smoked meditatively among the stalls 
of a little flower market, wondering why some of the 
costumes of Holland are so charming and others so un- 
pleasing. A few dear old women in lace caps were present, 



KAMPEN S55 

but there were also younger women who had made their 
pretty heads ugly with their decorations. 

At ZwoUe M. Havard was disappointed to find no wax 
figure of the famous wild girl found in the Cranenburg 
Forest in 1718. She roamed its recesses almost naked for 
some time, eluding all capture, but was at last taken with 
nets and conveyed to Zwolle. As she could not be under- 
stood, an account of her was circulated widely, and at 
length a woman in Antwerp who had lost a daughter in 
1702 heard of her, and on reaching Zwolle immediately 
recognised her as her child. The magistrates, accepting 
the story, handed the girl to her affectionate parent, who 
at once set about exhibiting her throughout the country 
at a great profit. The story illustrates either the credulity 
of magistrates or the practical character of some varieties 
of maternal love. 

Kampen, nearer the mouth of the Yssel, close to Zwolle, 
is exceedingly well worth visiting. The two towns are very 
different : Zwolle is patrician, Kampen plebeian ; Zwolle 
suggests wealth and light-heartedness ; at Kampen there 
is a large fishing population and no one seems to be 
wealthy. Indeed, being without municipal rates, it is, I 
am told, a refuge of the needy. Any old town that is on 
a river, and that river a mouth of the Rhine, is good 
enough for me ; but when it is also a treasure house of 
mediaeval architecture one's cup is full. And Kampen has 
many treasures : beautiful fourteenth-century gateways, 
narrow quaint streets, a cheerful isolated campanile, a fine 
church, and the greater portion of an odd but wholly de- 
lightful stadhuis in red brick and white stone, with a gay 
little crooked bell-tower and statues of great men and 
great qualities on its facade. 

For one possession alone, among many, the stadhuis 



256 OLD OAK 

must be visited — its halls of justice, veritable paradises of 
old oak, with a very wonderful fireplace. The halls are 
really one, divided by a screen ; in one half, the council 
room, sat the judges, in the other the advocates, and, I 
suppose, the public. The advocates addressed the screen, 
on the other side of which sat Fate, in the persons of the 
municipal fathers, enthroned in oak seats of unsurpassed 
gravity and dignity, amid all the sombre insignia of their 
office. The chimney-piece is an imposing monument of ab- 
stract Justice — no more elaborate one can exist. Solomon 
is there, directing the distribution of the baby ; Faith and 
Truth, Law, Religion and Charity are there also. Never 
can a tribunal have had a more appropriate setting than 
at Kampen. The Rennes judiciaries should have sat there, 
to lend further ironical point to their decision. 

The stadhuis has other possessions interesting to anti- 
quaries : valuable documents, gold and silver work, the 
metal and leather squirts through which boiling oil was 
projected at the enemies of the town; while an iron cage 
for criminals, similar, I imagine, to that in which Jan of 
Ley den was exhibited, hangs outside. 

Travellers visit Kampen pre-eminently to see the stadhuis 
chimney-piece and oak, but the whole town is a museum. 
I wish now that I had arranged to be longer there ; but 
unaware of Kampen's charms I allowed but a short time 
both for Zwolle and itself. On my next visit to Holland 
Kampen shall be my headquarters for some days. Amid the 
restfulness of mediaevalism, the friendliness of the fishing 
folk and the breezes of the Zuyder Zee, one should do well. 
A boat from Amsterdam to Kampen sails every morning. 

Despite its Judgment Hall and its other merits Kampen 
is the Dutch Gotham. Any foolishly naive speech or 
action is attributed to Kampen's wise men. In one story 



SIR PHILIP SIDNEY 257 

the fathers of the town place the municipal sundial under 
cover to protect it from the rays of the sun. In another 
they meet together to deliberate on the failure of the 
water pipes and fire engines during a fire, and pass a rule 
that " on the evening preceding a fire " all hydrants and 
engines must be overhauled. M. Havard gives also the- 
following instance of Kampen sagacity. A public func- 
tionary was explaining the financial state of the town. 
He asserted that one of the principal profits arose from 
the tolls exacted on the entrance of goods into the town. 
"Each gate," said the ingenious advocate, "has brought 
in ten million florins this year ; that is to say, with seven 
gates we have gained seventy million florins. This is a 
most important fact. I therefore propose that the council 
double the number of gates, and in this way we shall in 
future considerably augment our funds." The Irishman 
who, when asked to buy a stove that would save half his 
fuel, replied that he would have two and save it all, was 
of the same school of logic. 

From Kampen the island of Urk may be visited : but I 
have not been there. In 1787, I have read somewhere, 
the inhabitants of Urk decided to form a club in which 
to practise military exercises and the use of arms. When 
the club was formed it had but one member. Hence a 
Dutch saying—" It is the Urk club''. 

Nor did I stay at Deventer, but hastened on to Zutphen 
with my thoughts straying all the time to the grey walls 
of Penshurst castle in Kent and its long galleries filled 
with memories of Sir Philip Sidney — the gentle knight 
w^ho was a boy there, and who died at Arnheim of a wound 
which he received in the siege of Zutphen three and a 
quarter centuries ago. 

At Naarden we have seen how terrible was the destroy- 
17 



258 MORE SPANISH CRUELTY 

ing power of the Spaniards. It was at Zutphen that they 
had first given rein to their lust for blood. When Zutphen 
was taken by Don Frederic in 1572, at the beginning of 
the war, Motley tells us that " Alva sent orders to his son to 
leave not a single man alive in the city^ and to burn every 
house to the ground. The Duke's command was almost 
literally obeyed. Don Frederic entered Zutphen, and 
without a moment's warning put the whole garrison to 
the sword. The citizens next fell a defenceless prey ; 
some being stabbed in the streets, some hanged on the 
trees which decorated the city, some stripped stark naked, 
and turned out into the fields to freeze to death in the 
wintry night. As the work of death became too fatiguing 
for the butchers, five hundred innocent burghers were tied 
two and two, back to back, and drowned like dogs in the 
river Yssel. A few stragglers who had contrived to elude 
pursuit at first, were afterwards taken from their hiding- 
places, and hung upon the gallows hy the feet^ some of 
which victims suffered four days and nights of agony 
before death came to their relief" 

On the day that I was in Zutphen it was the quietest 
town I had found in all Holland — not excepting Mon- 
nickendam between the arrival of the steam-trams. The 
clean bright streets were empty and still : another massacre 
almost might just have occurred. I had Zutphen to myself. 
I could not even find the koster to show me the church ; 
and it was in trying door after door as I walked round it 
that I came upon the only sign of life in the place. For 
one handle at last yielding I found myself instantly in a 
small chapel filled with many young women engaged in a 
scripture class. The sudden irruption of an embarrassed 
and I imagine somewhat grotesque foreigner seems to have 
been exactly what every member of this little congregation 



WAX WORKS 259 

was most desiring, and I never heard a merrier or more 
spontaneous burst of laughter. I stood not upon the order 
of my going. 

The church is vast and very quiet and restful, with a 
large plain window of green glass that increases its cool 
freshness; while the young leaves of a chestnut close to 
another window add to this effect. The koster coming at 
last, I was shown the ancient chained library in the chapter 
house, and he enlarged upon the beauties of a metal font. 
Wandering out again into this city of silence I found in the 
square by the church an exhibition of wax works which was 
to be opened at four o'clock. Making a note to return 
to it at that hour, I sought the river, where the timber 
is floated down from the German forests, and lost my- 
self among peat barges and other craft, and walked some 
miles in and about Zutphen, and a little way down a 
trickling stream whence the view of the city is very beauti- 
ful ; and by-and-by found myself by the church and the 
wax works again, in a town that since my absence had 
quite filled with bustling people — four o'clock having 
struck and the Princess of the Day Dream having (I sup- 
pose) been kissed. The change was astonishing. 

Wax works always make me uncomfortable, and these 
were no exception ; but the good folk of Zutphen found 
them absorbing. The murderers stood alone, staring with 
that fixity which only a wax assassin can compass; but 
for the most part the figures were arranged in groups with 
dramatic intent. Here was a confessional ; there a fare- 
well between lovers ; here a wounded Boer meeting his death 
at the bayonet of an English dastard ; there a Queen 
Eleanor sucking poison from her husband's arm. A series 
of illuminated scenes of rapine and disaster might be 
studied through magnifying glasses. The presence of a 



260 PICTURE POST CARDS 

wax bust of Zola was due, I imagine, less to his illustrious 
career than to the untoward circumstances of his death. 
The usual Sleeping Beauty heaved her breast punctually 
in the centre of the tent. 

In one point only did the exhibition differ from the wax 
works of the French and Italian fairs — it was undeviatingly 
decent. There were no jokes, and no physiological models. 
But the Dutch, I should conjecture, are not morbid. They 
have their coarse fun, laugh, and get back to business 
again. Judged by that new short-cut to a nation's moral 
tone, the picture postcard, the Dutch are quite sound. 
There is a shop in the high-spirited Nes Straat at Amster- 
dam where a certain pictorial ebullience has play, but I 
saw none other of the countless be-postcarded windows in all 
Holland that should cause a serious blush on my cheek ; 
while the Nes Straat specimens were fundamentally sound. 
Rabelaisian rather than Armand-Sylvestrian, not vicious 
but merely vulgar. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

ARNHEIM TO BERGEN-OP-ZOOM 

Arnheim the Joyous — A wood walk — Tesselschade Visscher and the 
Chambers of Rhetoric — Epigrams — Poet friends — The nightingale — 
An Arnheim adventure — Ten years at one book — Dutch and Latin — 
Dutch and French — A French story — Dutch and English — The 
English Schole-Master — Master and scholar — A nervous catechism 
— Avoiding the birch — A riot of courtesy — A bill of lading — Dutch 
proverbs — The Rhine and its mouths — Nymwegen — Lady Mary 
Wortley Montagu again — Painted shutters — The Valkhof — 
Hertogenbosch — Brothers at Bommel — The hero of Breda — Two 
beautiful tombs — Bergen-op-Zoom — Messrs. Grimston and Red- 
head — Tholen — The Dutch feminine countenance. 

AT Arnheim we come to a totally new Holland. The 
Maliebaan and the park at Utrecht, with their 
spacious residences, had prepared us a little for Arnheim's 
wooded retirement ; but not completely. Rotterdam is 
given to shipping ; The Hague makes laws and fashions ; 
Leyden and Utrecht teach ; Amsterdam makes money. It 
is at Arnheim that the retired merchant and the returned 
colonist set up their home. It is the richest residential 
city in the country. Arnheim the Joyous was its old name. 
Arnheim the Comfortable it might now be styled. 

It is the least Dutch of Dutch towns : the Rhine brings 
a bosky beauty to it, German in character and untamed by 
Dutch restraining hands. The Dutch Switzerland the 
country hereabout is called. Arnheim recalls Richmond 

(261) 



262 THE NIGHTINGALE 

too, for it has a Richmond Hill — a terrace-road above a 
shaggy precipice overlooking the river. 

I walked in the early morning to Klarenbeck, up and 
down in a vast wood, and at a point of vantage called the 
Steenen Tafel looked down on the Rhine valley. Nothing 
could be less like the Holland of the earher days of my 
wanderings — nothing, that is, that was around me, but 
with the farther bank of the river the flatness instantly 
begins and continues as far as one can see in the north. 

It was a very beautiful morning in May, and as I rested 
now and then among the resinous pines I was conscious of 
beino; traitorous to Eng-land in wanderino; here at all. No 

cD CD O 

one ought to be out of England in April and May. At 
one point I met a squirrel — ^just such a nimble short- 
tempered squirrel as those which scold and hide in the top 
branches of the fir trees near my own home in Kent — and 
my sense of guilt increased ; but when, on my way back, 
in a garden near Arnheim I heard a nightingale, the 
treachery was complete. 

And this reminds me that the best poem of the most 
charmmg figm'e in Dutch literature — Tesselschade Visscher 
— is about the nightingale. The story of this poetess and 
her friends belongs more properly to Amsterdam, or to 
Alkmaar, but it may as well be told here while the Arnheim 
nightingale — the only nightingale that I heard in Holland 
— is plaining and exulting. 

Tesselschade was the daughter of the poet and rhetorician 
Roemer Visscher. She was born on 25th March, 1594, 
and earned her curious name from the ciiTumstance that 
on the same day her father was -wTecked off Texel. In 
honour of his rescue he named his daughter Tesselschade, 
or Texel wreck, thereby, I think, eternally impairing his 
right to be considered a true poet. As a matter of fact 



THE RHETORICIANS 263 

he was rather an epigrammatist than a poet, his ambition 
being to be known as the Dutch Martial. Here is a taste 
of his Martial manner : — 

Jan sorrows — sorrows far too much : 'tis true 
A sad affliction hath distressed his life ; — 
Mourns he that death hath ta'en his children two ? 
O no ! he mourns that death hath left his wife. 

I have said that Visscher was a rhetorician. The word 
perhaps needs a little explanation, for it means more than 
would appear. In those days rhetoric was a living cult 
in the Netherlands : Dutchmen and Flemings played at 
rhetoric with some of the enthusiasm that we keep for 
cricket and sport. Every town of any importance had its 
Chamber of Rhetoric. "These Chambers," says Long- 
fellow in his Poets and Poetry of Europe^ " were to Holland, 
in the fifteenth century, what the Guilds of the Meister- 
singers were to Germany, and were numerous throughout 
the Netherlands. Brussels could boast of five ; Antwerp 
of four ; Louvain of three ; and Ghent, Bruges, Malines, 
Middelburg, Gouda, Haarlem, and Amsterdam of at least 
one. Each Chamber had its coat of arms and its standard, 
and the directors bore the title of Princes and Deans. At 
times they gave public representations of poetic dialogues 
and stage-plays, called Spelen van Sinne, or Moralities. 
Like the Meistersingers, they ga\e singular titles to their 
songs and metres. A verse was called a Regel ; a strophe, 
a Clause ; and a burden or refrain, a Stockregel. If a half- 
verse closed as a strophe, it was a Steert^ or tail. Tafel- 
spelen, and Spelen van Shine, were the titles of the dramatic 
exhibitions ; and the rhymed invitation to these was called 
a Charte, or Uitroep (outcry). Ketendichten (chain-poems) 
are short poems in which the last word of each line rhymes 
with the first of the line following; Scaehherd (checker- 



264^ FANTASTIC RHYMING 

bourd), a poem of sixty-four lines, so rhymed, that in every 
direction it forms a strophe of eight lines ; and Dohhel-steert 
(double-tail), a poem in which a double rhyme closes each 
line.^ 

" The example of Flanders was speedily followed by Zee- 
land and Holland. In 1430, there was a Chamber at 
Middelburg ; in 1433, at Vlaardingen ; in 1434, at Nieuw- 
kerk ; and in 1437, at Gouda. Even insignificant Dutch 
villages had their Chambers. Among others, one was 
founded in the Lier, in the year 1480. In the remaining 
provinces they met with less encouragement. They existed, 
however, at Utrecht, Amersfoort, Leeuwarden, and Hasselt. 
The purity of the language was completely undermined by 
the rhyming self-called Rhetoricians, and their abandoned 
courses brought poetry itself into disrepute. All distinction 
of genders was nearly abandoned ; the original abundance 
of words ran waste ; and that which was left became com- 
pletely overwhelmed by a torrent of barbarous terms." 

Wagenaer, in his ''Description of Amsterdam," gives 
a copy of a painter's bill for work done for a rhetorician's 
performance at the play-house in the town of Alkmaar, of 
which the following is a translation : — 

" Imprimis, made for the Clerks a Hell ; 
Item, the Pavilion of Satan ; 
Item, two pairs of Devil's-breeches ; 
Item, a Shield for the Christian Knight ; 

1 " With the Rederijkern," Longfellow adds, " Hood's amusing ' Noc- 
turnal Sketch ' would have been a Driedobbelsteert, or a poem with three 
tai Is : — 

Even is come ; and from the dark park, hark, 

The signal of the setting sun, one gun ! 

And six is sounding from the chime, prime time 

To go and see the Drury-Lane Dane slain. 

Anon Night comes, and with her wings brings things 

Such as with his poetic tongue Young sung." 



DUTCH POETS 265 

Item, have painted the Devils whenever they played ; 
Item, some Arrow^s and other small matters. 
Sum total ; vi^orth in all xii. guilders. 

«' Jaques Mol. 
" Paid, October viii., 95 [1495]." 

Among the Dutch pictures at the Louvre is an anony- 
mous work representing the Committee of a Chamber of 
Rhetoric. 

Roemer Visscher, the father of the poetess, was a lead- 
ing rhetorician at Amsterdam, and the president of the 
Eglantine Chamber of the Brother's Blossoming in Love 
(as he and his fellow-rhetoricians called themselves) . None 
the less, he was a sensible and clever man, and he brought 
up his three daughters ver^ wisely. He did not make 
them blue stockings, but saw that they acquired comely 
and useful arts and crafts, and he rendered them unique 
by teaching them to swim in the canal that ran through 
his garden. He also was enabled to ensure for them the 
company of the best poetical intellects of the time — 
Vondel and Brederoo, Spiegel, Hooft and Huyghens. 

Of these the greatest was Joost van den Vondel, a neigh- 
bour of Visscher's in Amsterdam, the author ot " Lucifer," 
a pucm from which it has been suggested that Milton 
borrowed. Like Izaak Walton Vondel combined haber- 
dashery with literature. Spiegel was a wealthy patron of 
the arts, and a president, with Visscher, of the Eglantine 
Chamber with the painfully sentimental name. Constantin 
Huyghens wrote light verse with intricate metres, and an 
occasional epigram. Here is one : — 

ON PETER'S POETRY. 

When Peter condescends to write, 

His verse deserves to see the light. 

If any further you inquire, 

I mean — the candle or the fire. . 



^66 ANNA VISSCHER 

Also a practical statesman, it was to Huyghens that 
Holland owes the beautiful old road from The Hague to 
Scheveningen in which Jacob Cats built his house. 

Among these friends Anna and Tesselschade grew into 
cultured women of quick and sympathetic intellect. Both 
wrote poetry, but Tesselschade's is superior to her sister's. 
Among Anna's early work were some additions to a new 
edition of her father's Zinne-Poppen, one of her poems 
running thus in the translation by Mr. Edmund Gosse 
in the very pleasant essay on Tesselschade in his Studies 
in the Literature of Northern Europe : — 

A wife that sings and pipes all day, 
And never puts her lute away, 
No service to her hand finds she ; 
Fie, fie ! for this is vanity ! 

But is it not a heavenly sight 
To see a woman take delight 
With song or string her husband dear, 
When daily work is done, to cheer ? 

Misuse may turn the sweetest sweet 
To loathsome wormwood, I repeat ; 
Yea, wholesome medicine, full of grace, 
May prove a poison — out of place. 

They who on thoughts eternal rest, 
With earthly pleasures may be blest ; 
Since they know well these shadows gay, 
Like wind and smoke, will pass away. 

Tesselschade, who was much loved by her poet friends, 
disappointed them all by marrying a dull sailor of Alkmaar 
named Albert Krombalgh. Settling down at Alkmaar, 
she continued her intercourse with her old companions, 
and some new ones, by letter. Among her new friends 
were Barlaeus, or Van Baerle, the first Latinist of the day, 



TESSELSCHADE'S POEM 267 

and Jacob Cats. When her mamed hfe was cut short 
some few years later, Barlaeus proposed to the young 
widow ; but it was in vain, as she informed him by quoting 
from Cats these lines :— 

When a valved shell of ocean 

Breaks one side or loses one, 
Though you seek with all devotion 

You can ne'er the loss atone, 
Never make again the edges 

Bite together, tooth for tooth, 
And, just so, old love alleges 

Nought is like the heart's first troth. 

These are Tesselschade's lines upon the nightingale in 
Mr. Gosse's happy translation : — 

THE WILD SONGSTER. 

Praise thou the nightingale. 
Who with her joyous tale 
Doth make thy heart rejoice, 
Whether a singing plume she be, or viewless winged voice ; 

Whose warblings, sweet and clear, 
Ravish the listening ear 
With joy, as upward float 
The throbbing liquid trills of her enchanted throat ; 

Whose accents pure and ripe 
Sound like an organ pipe, 
That holdeth divers songs. 
And with one tongue alone sings like a score of tongues. 

The rise and fall again 
In clear and lovely strain 
Of her sweet voice and shrill, 
Outclamours with its songs the singing springing rill. 

A creature whose great praise 
Her rarity displays. 
Seeing she only lives 
A month in all the year to which her song she gives. 



268 A PATIENT SCHOLAR 

But this thing sets the crown 
Upon her high renown, 
That such a Httle bird as she 
Can harbour such a strength of clamorous harmony. 

Arnheim presents after dinner the usual scene of con- 
tented movement. The people throng the principal streets, 
and every one seems happy and placid. The great concert 
hall, Musis Sacrum, had not yet begun its season when 
I was there, and the only spectacle which the town could 
muster was an exhibition of strength by two oversized boys, 
which I avoided. 

At Arnheim, I should relate, an odd thing happened to 
my companion. When she was there last, in 1894, she 
had need to obtain linseed for a poultice, and visited a 
chemist for the purpose. He was an old man, and she 
found him sitting in the window studying his English 
grammar. How long his study had lasted I have no 
notion, but he knew less of our tongue than she of his, and 
to get the linseed was no easy matter. Ten years passed 
and recollection of the Arnheim chemist had clean evapor- 
ated ; but chancing to look up as we walked through the 
town, the sight of the old chemist seated in his shop- window 
poring over a book brought the whole incident back to her. 
We stepped to the window and stole a glance at the volume : 
it was an English Grammar. He had been studying it 
ever since the night of the linseed poultice. 

It was, we felt, an object-lesson to us, who during the 
same interval had taken advantage of every opportunity 
of neglecting the Dutch tongue. 

That tongue, however, is not attractive. Even those 
who have spoken it to most purpose do not always admire 
it. I find that Kasper van Baerle wrote : " What then do 
we Netherlanders speak ? Words fi'om a foreign tongue : 



BILDERDYK 269 

we are but a collected crowd, of feline origin, driven by 
a strange fatality to these mouths of the Rhine. Why, 
since the mighty descendants of Romulus here pitched their 
tents, choose we not rather the holy language of the 
Romans ! " 

We may consider Dutch a harsh tongue, and prefer 
that all foreigners should learn English ; but our dislike of 
Dutch is as nothing compared with Dutch dislike of French 
as expressed in some verses by Bilderdyk when the tyranny 
of Napoleon threatened them : — 

Begone, thou bastard-tongue ! so base — so broken — 

By human jackals and hyenas spoken ; 

Formed of a race of infidels, and fit 

To laugh at truth — and scepticise in wit ; 

What stammering, sniveUing sounds, which scarcely dare, 

Bravely through nasal channel meet the ear — 

Yet helped by apes' grimaces — and the devil, 

Have ruled the world, and ruled the world for evil ! 

But French is now the second language that is taught 
in Dutch schools. German comes first and English third. 

The Dutch language often resembles English very 
closely; sometimes so closely as to be ridiculous. For 
example, to an English traveller who has been manoeuvr- 
ing in vain for some time in the effort to get at the value 
of an article, it comes as a shock comparable only to being 
run over by a donkey cart to discover that the Dutch for 
" What is the price ? " is " Wat is de prijs ? " 

The best old Dutch phrase-book is The English Schole- 
Master, the copy of which that lies before me was printed 
at Amsterdam by John Bouman in the year 1658. I have 
already quoted a short passage from it, in Chapter 11. 
This is the full title :— 



270 AN OLD PHRASE-BOOK 

The English Schole-Master ; 

or 

Certaine rules and helpes^ whereby 

the Jiatives of the Netherlandes, may 

bee, in a short time, taught to 

read^ understand, and speahe 

the English tongue. 

By the helpe whereof the Eng-lish also 

may be better instmcted in the knowledge 

of the Dutch tongue, thaji by any voca- 

bulars, or other Dutch and English 

books, which hitherto they have 

had, for that purpose. 

There is internal evidence that the book was the work of 
a Dutchman rather than an Englishman; for the Dutch 
is better than the English. I quote (omitting the Dutch) 
part of one of the long dialogues between a master and 
scholar of which the manual is largely composed. Much 
of its interest lies in the continual imminence of the rod 
and the skill of the child in saving the situation : — 

M. In the meane time let me aske you one thing more. Have you not 
bin to-day at the holy sermon ? 
S. I was there. 
M. Who are your witnesses ? 

S. Many of the schoole-fellowes who saw me can witnes it. 
M. But some must be produced. 
S. I shall produce them when you commaund it. 
M. Who did preach ? 
S. Master N. 

M. At what time began he ? 
S. At seven a clock. 
M. Whence did he take his text ? 
S. Out of the epistle of Paul to the Romanes, 
M. In what chapter ? 
S. In the eighth. 



SAVING HIS SKIN 271 

M. Hitherto you have answered well : let us now see what follows. 
Have you remembred anything ? 

S. Nothing that I can repeat. 

M. Nothing at al ? Bethink (your self) a little, and take heed that you 
bee not disturbed, but bee of good courage. 

S. Truly master I can remember nothing. 

M. What, not one word ? 

S. None at all. 

M. I am ready to strike you : what profit have you then gotten ? 

S, I know not, otherwise than that perhaps I have in the mean time 
abstained from evill. 

M, That is some what indeed, if it could but so be that you have kept 
your self wholy from evill. 

S. I have abstained so much as I was able. 

M. Graunt that it bee so, yet you have not pleased God, seeing it is 
written, depart from evill and doe good, but tell mee (I pray thee) for 
what cause principally did you goe thither ? 

S. That I might learne something. 

M. Why have you not done so ? 

S. I could not. 

M. Could you not, knave ? yea you would not, or truly you have not 
addicted your self to it. 

S. I am compelled to confesse it. 

M. What compelleth you ? 

S. My Conscience, which accuseth me before God. 

M. You say well : oh that it were from the heart. 

S. Truly I speak it from myne heart. 

M. It may bee so : but goe to, what was the cause that you have re- 
membred nothing ? 

S. My negligence : for I attended not diligently. 

M. What did you then? 

S. Sometimes I slept. 

M. So you used to doe : but what did you the rest of the time ? 

S. I thought on a thousand fooleries, as children are wont to doe. 

M. Are you so very a child, that you ought not to be attentive to 
heare the word of God 7 

S. If I had bin attentive, I should have profitted something. 

M. What have you then meritted ? 

S. Stripes. 

M. You have truly meritted them, and that very many. 

S. I ingenuously confess it. 

M. But in word only I think. 



272 POLITENESS IN EXCESS 

S. Yea truly from myne heart. 

M. Possibly, but in the meane time prepare to receive stripes. 
S. O master forgive it, I beseech you, I confes I have sinned, but not 
of malice. 

M. But such an evill negligence comes very neare wickedness (malice). 
S. Truly I strive not against that : but nevertheles I implore your 
clemencie through Jesus Christ. 

M. What will you then doe, if I shall forgive you ? 
S. I will doe my dutie henceforth, as I hope. 

M. You should have added thereto, by God's helpe : but you care 
little for that. 

S. Yea master, by God's help, I will hereafter doe my duty. 
M. Goe to, I pardon you the fault for your teares : and I forgive it you 
on this condition, that you bee myndful of your promise. 
S. I thank you most Courteous master. 

M. You shall bee in very great favour with mee, if you remember your 
promise. 

S. The most good and great God graunt that I may. 
M. That is my desire, that liee would graunt it. 

Here is another dialogue. Whether the riot of courtesy 
displayed in it was typical of either England or Holland 
at that time I cannot say ; but in neither country are we 
now so solicitous : — 

Salutations at meeting and parting. 
Clemens. David. 

C. God save you David. 

D. And you also Clemens. 

C. God save you heartily. 

D. And you also, as heartily. 

C. How do you ? 

D. I am well I thank God; at your service: and you Clemens, how is 
it with you ? well ? 

C. I am also in health : how doth your father and mother ? 

D. They are in good health praised be God. 

C. How goes it with you my good friend ? 

D. It goeth well with mee, goes it but so well with you. 

C, I wish you good health. 

D. I wish the same to you also. 
C. I salute you. 







^^r " ' w^^^^^K^^^^^K^' m i" M 


r'M^ 




,.\,rT^_ -- ;^. ' _ . '■ 



THE IJTTLE TRIXCESS 

PAUI.US MOREELSE 
■■■o:n the picture in the Ryks Miisetan 



FOR A BILL OF LADING 273 

D. And I you also. 

C. Are you well ? are you in good health ? 

D. I am well, indeed I am in good health, I am healthful, and in 
prosperity. 

C. That is good. That is well. That is pleasing to me. That maketh 
mee glad. I love to hear that. I beseech you to take care of your health. 
Preserve your health. 

D. I can tarry no longer now. I am in haste to be gone. I must go. 
I have need of my time. I cannot abide standing here. Fare you well. 
God be with you. God keep you still. I wish your health may continue. 

C. And you also my loving friend, God protect you. God guide you. 
God bee with you. May it please you in my behalf, heartily to salute 
your wife and children. 

D. I vWll do your message. But I pray, commend mee also to your 
father and mother. 

At the end of the book are some forms, in Dutch and 
English, of mercantile letters, among them a specimen bill 
of lading of which I quote a portion as an example of the 
gracious way in which business was done in old and simpler 
days : — 

I, J. P. of Amsterdam, master under God of my ship called the Saint 
Peter at this present lying ready in the river of Amsterdam to saile with 
the first goode winde which God shall give toward London, where my 
right unlading shal be, acknowledge and confes that I have receaved 
under the hatches of my foresaid ship of you S. J., merchaunt, to wit: 
four pipes of oile, two chests of linnen, sixteen buts of currents, one bale of 
canvase, five bals of pepper, thirteen rings of brasse wyer, fiftie bars of 
iron, al dry and wel conditioned, marked with this marke standing before, 
all which I promise to deliver (if God give me a prosperous voyage with 
my said ship) at London aforesaid, to the worshipful Mr. A. J. to his 
factour or assignes, paying for the freight of the foresaid goods 20 fs. by 
the tun. 

Quaintness and humour are not confined to the ancient 
phrase-books. An English-Dutch conversational manual 
from which the languages are still learned has a specimen 
" dialogue " in a coach, which is opeiied by the gentleman 
remarking genially and politely to his fellow-passenger, 
a lady, "Madame, shall we arrange our legs". 
18 



274 DUTCH 

It occurs to me that very little Dutch has found its way 
into these pages. Let me therefore give the first stanza of 
the national song, " Voor Vaderland en Vorst " : — 

Wien Neerlandsch bloed in de aderen vloeit, 

Van vreemde smetten vrij, 
Wiens hart voor land en Koning gloeit, 

Verhef den zang als wij : 
Hij stei met ons, vereend van zin, 

Met onbeklemde borst, 
Het godgevallig feestlied in 

Voor Vaderland en Vorst. 

These are brave words. A very pedestrian translation runs 
thus : — 

Who Ne'erland's blood feel nobly flow, 

From foreign tainture free, 
Whose hearts for king and country glow, 

Come, raise the song as we : 
With breasts serene, and spirits gay. 

In holy union sing 
The soul-inspiring festal lay, 

For Fatherland and King. 

And now a specimen of really mellifluous Dutch. " How 
would you like," is the timely question of a daily paper 
this morning, as I finish this chapter, " to be hit by a ' snell- 
paardelooszoondeerspoorwegpitroolrijtung ? ' That is what 
would happen to you if you were run down by a motor-car 
in Holland. The name comes from ' snell,' rapid ; ' paar- 
deloos,' horseless ; 'zoondeerspoorweg,' without rails ; 'pit- 
roolrijtung,' driven by petroleum. Only a Dutchman can 
pronounce it." 

Let me spice this chapter by selecting from the pages of 
proverbs in Dutch and English a few which seem to me 
most excellent. No nation has bad proverbs ; the Dutch 
have some very good ones. 



THE WISDOM OF MANY 275 

Many cows, much trouble. 

Even hares pull a lion by the beard when he is old. 

Men can bear all things, except good days. 

The best pilots are ashore. 

Velvet and silk are strange herbs : they blow the fire out 
of the kitchen. 

It is easy to make a good fire of another's turf. 

It is good cutting large girths of another man's leather. 

High trees give more shadow than fruit. 

An old hunter delighteth to hear of hunting. 

It hath soon rained enough in a wet pool. 

God giveth the fowls meat, but they must fly for it. 

An idle person is the devil's pillow. 

No hen so witty but she layeth one egg lost in the 
nettles. 

It happeneth sometimes that a good seaman falls over- 
board. 

He is wise that is always wise. 

When every one sweeps before his own house, then are 
the streets clean. 

It is profitable for a man to end his life, before he die. 

Before thou trust a friend eat a peck of salt with him. 

It's bad catching hares with drums. 

The pastor and sexton seldom agree. 

No crown cureth headache. 

There is nothing that sooner dryeth up than a tear. 

Land purchase and good marriage happen not every 
day. 

When old dogs bark it is time to look out. 

Of early breakfast and late marriage men get not lightly 
the headache. 

Ride on, but look about. 

Nothing in haste, but to catch fleas. 



276 THE RHINE'S ALIASES 

To return to Arnheim : of the Groote Kerk I remember 
only the very delicate colouring of the ceiling, and the 
monument of Charles van Egmont, Duke of Guelders. I 
had grown tii'ed of architecture : it seemed goodlier to 
watch the shipping on the river, which at Arnheim may 
be called the Rhine without hesitation. All the traffic to 
Cologne must pass the town. Hitherto one had had qualms 
about the use of the word, having seen the Rhine under 
various aliaises in so many places. The Maas at Rotter- 
dam is a mouth of the Rhine ; but before it can become 
the Rhine proper it becomes the Lek. What is called the 
true mouth of the Rhine is at Katwyk. At Dordrecht again 
is another of the Rhine's mouths, the Waal, which runs 
into the old Maas and then into the sea. The Yssel, still 
another mouth of the Rhine, which I saw at Kampen on 
its way into the Zuyder Zee, breaks away from the parent 
river just below Arnheim. As a matter of fact all Holland 
is on the Rhine, but the word must be used with care. 

If one would study Dutch romantic scenery I think 
Nymwegen on the whole a better town to stay in than 
Amheim. It is simpler in itself, richer in historic associa- 
tions, and the country in the immediate east is very well 
worth exploring — hill and valley and pine woods, with 
quaint villages here and there ; and, for the comfortable, 
a favourite hotel at Berg en Daal from which great 
stretches of the Rhine may be seen. 

To see Nymwegen itself to greater advantage, with its 
massed houses and towers presenting a solid front, one 
must go over the iron bridge to Lent and then look back 
across the river. At all times the old town wears from 
this point of view an interesting and romantic air, but 
never so much as at evening. 

Some versions of " Lohengrin " set the story at Nymwegen; 



THE DUTCH NOTTINGHAM 277 

but the Lohengrin monument is at Kleef, a few miles above 
the confluence of the Rhine and the Waal, the river on 
which Nymwegen stands. 

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who was at Nymwegen 
in 1716, drew an odd comparison between that town and 
the English town of Nottingham. If Edinburgh is the 
modern Athens there is no reason why Nottingham should 
not be the English Nymwegen. Lady Mary writes to her 
friend Sarah Chiswell : " If you were with me in this 
town, you would be ready to expect to receive visits from 
your Nottingham friends. No two places were ever more 
resembling ; one has but to give the Maese the name of the 
Trent, and there is no distinguishing the prospects — the 
houses, like those of Nottingham, built one above another, 
and are intermixed in the same manner with trees and 
gardens. The tower they call Julius Csesar's has the same 
situation with Nottingham Castle ; and I cannot help 
fancying I see from it the Trent-field, Adboulton, &c., 
places so well known to us. 'Tis true, the fortifications 
make a considerable difference . ..." 

Nymwegen reminded me of nothing but itself. It is in 
reality two towns : a spacious residential town near the 
station, with green squares, and statues, and modern houses 
(one of them so modern as to be employing a vacuum cleaner, 
which throbbed and panted in the garden as I passed) ; and 
the old mediaeval Nymwegen, gathered about one of the 
most charming market places in all Holland — a scene for 
comic opera. The Dutch way of chequering the shutters 
in blue and yellow (as at Middelburg) or in red and black, 
or red and white, is here practised to perfection. The 
very beautiful weigh-house has red and black shutters ; 
the gateway which leads to the church has them too. 

Never have I seen a church so hemmed in by surround- 



278 THE VALKHOF 

ing buildings. The little houses beset it as the pigmies 
beset Antasus. After some difficulty I found my way in, 
and wandered for a while among its white immensities. 
It is practically a church within a church, the region of 
services being isolated in the midst, in the unlovely Dutch 
way, within hideous wooden walls. It is very well worth 
while to climb the tower and see the great waterways of 
this country beneath you. The prospect is mingled wood 
and polder : to the east and south-east, shaggy hills ; to 
the west, the moors of Brabant; to the north, Arnheim's 
dark heights. 

Nymwegen has many lions, chief of which perhaps is the 
Valkhof, in the grounds above the river — the remains of a 
palace of the Carlovingians. It is of immense age, being 
at once the oldest building in Holland and the richest 
in historic memories. For here lived Charlemagne and 
Charles the Bald, Charles the Bold and Maximilian of 
Austria. The palace might still be standing were it not 
for the destructiveness of the French at the end of the 
eighteenth century. A picture by Jan van Goyen in the 
stadhuis gives an idea of the Valkhof in his day, before 
vandalism had set in. 

As some evidence of the town's pride in her association 
with these gi'eat names the curfew, which is tolled every 
evening at eight o'clock, but which I did not hear, is 
called Charlemagne's Prayer. The fa9ade of the stadhuis 
is further evidence, for it carries the statues of some of the 
ancient monarchs who made Nymwegen their home. 

Within the stadhuis is another of the beautiful justice 
halls which Holland possesses in such profusion, the most in- 
teresting of which we saw at Kampen. Kampen's oak seats 
are not, however, more beautiful than those of Nymwegen ; 
and Kampen has no such clock as stands here, distilling 



BOIS LE DUG 279 

information, tick by tick, of days, and years, and sun, and 
moon, and stars. The stadhuis has also treasures of 
tapestry and Spanish leather, and a museum containing a 
very fine collection of antiquities, including one of the famous 
wooden petticoats of Nymwegen — a painted barrel worn as 
a penance by peccant dames. 

From Nymwegen the train took me to Hertzogenbosch, or 
Bois le Due, the capital of Brabant. It is from Brabant, we 
were told by a proverb which I quoted in my first chapter 
on Friesland, that one should take a sheep. Great flocks 
of sheep may be seen on the Brabant moors, exactly as in 
Mauve's pictures. They are kept not for food, for the 
Dutch dishke mutton, but for wool. 

Bois le Due has the richest example of mediaeval archi- 
tecture in Holland — the cathedral of St. John, a wonderful 
fantasy in stone, rich not only without, but, contrary to 
all Dutch precedent, within too ; for we are at last again 
among a people who for the most part retain the religion 
of Rome. The glass of the cathedral is poor, but there is 
a delicate green pattern on the vaulting which is very 
charming. The koster is proudest of the pulpit, and of a 
figure of the Virgin " which is carried in procession through 
the town every evening between July 7th and 16th". 

But I was not interested so much in particular things as 
in the cathedral as a whole. To be in the midst of this 
grey Gothic environment was what I desu'ed, and after a 
little difficulty I induced the koster to leave me to wander 
alone. It was the first church in Holland with the old 
authentic thrill. 

Bois le Due (as it is more simple to call it) is a gay town 
with perhaps the most spirited market place in the country. 
The stalls have each an awning, as in the south of Europe, 
and the women's heads are garlanded with flowers, I like 



280 A WAR STORY 

this method of decoration as little as any, but it carries 
with it a pleasant sense of festivity. 

From Bois le Due one may go due north to Utrecht and 
Amsterdam, passing on the way Bommel, with its tall and 
impressive tower rising from its midst. Or one may keep 
to the western route and reach Walcheren. That is my 
present course, and Bommel may be left with a curious 
story of the Spaniards in 1599. "Two brothers who had 
never seen, and had always been inquiring for, each other, 
met at last by chance at the siege, where they served in 
two different companies. The elder, who was called 
Hernando Diaz, having heard the other mentioned by the 
name of Encisso, which was his mother's surname, and which 
he had taken through affection, a thing common in Spain, 
put several questions to him concerning a number of family 
particulars, and knew at last by the exactness of his answers 
that he was the brother be had been so long seeking after ; 
upon which both proceeding to a close embrace, a cannon 
ball struck off both their heads, without separating their 
bodies, which fell clinging together." 

Helvoet, on the way to Tilburg, is the scene of an old 
but honoui-able story. Ireland tells us that George the 
Second, being detained by contrary winds on his return 
from Hanover, reposed at Helvoet until the sea should 
subside. While there he one day stopped a pretty Dutch 
girl to ask her what she had in her basket, "Eggs, 
mynheer." " And what is the price ? " " A ducat a piece, 
mynheer." " Are eggs so scarce then in Holland ? " " No, 
mynheer, but kings are." 

At Tilburg I did not tarry, but rode on to Breda (which 
is pronounced with all the accent on the second syllable), 
and which is famous for a castle (now a military school) 
and a tomb. The castle, a very beautiful building, was 




p ^ 



ADRIAN'S STRATEGY 281 

built by Count Henry of Nassau. On becoming in due 
course the property of William the Silent, it was confiscated 
by the Duke of Alva. How it was won back again is a 
story worth telling. 

The great achievement belonged to a simple boatman 
named Adrian. Whether or not he had read or heard of 
the Trojan horse is not known, but his scheme was not 
wholly different. Briefly he recommended Prince Maurice 
to conceal soldiers in his peat boat, under the peats, to 
be conveyed as peat into the Spanish garrison. The plan 
was approved and Captain Heranguiere was placed in 
charge of it. 

The boat was laden and Adrian poled it into the fortress ; 
and all was going well until the coldness of the night 
set the soldiers coughing. All were affected, but chiefly 
Lieutenant Hells, who, vainly attempting to be silent, at 
last implored his comrades to kill him lest he ruin the 
enterprise. Adrian, however, prevented this grim necessity 
by pumping very hard and thus covering the sound. 

It had been arranged that the Prince should be outside 
the city at a certain hour. Just before the time Heran- 
guiere and his men sprang out of their hiding, killed 
the garrison, opened the gates, and the castle was won 
again. Heranguiere was rewarded by being made governor 
of Breda ; Adrian was pensioned, and the boat was taken 
from its native elements and exalted into an honoured 
position in the castle. When, however, the Spanish general 
Spinola recaptured Breda, one of his first duties was to 
burn this worthy vessel. \ 

The jewel of Breda, which is a spreading fortified town, 
is the tomb of Count Engelbert I. of Nassau, in one of the 
chapels of the great church. The count and his lady, both 
sculptured in alabaster, lie side by side beneath a canopy 



282 CLEANLINESS 

of black marble, which is borne by four warriors also of 
alabaster. On the canopy are the arms and accoutrements 
of the dead Count. The tomb, which was the work of 
Vincenz of Bologna in the sixteenth century, is wholly 
satisfying in its dignity, austerity and grace. 

To the font in Breda cathedral William IIL attached 
the privilege of London citizenship. Any child christened 
there could claim the rights of a Londoner, the origin 
of the sanction being the presence of English soldiers 
at Breda and their wish that their children should be 
English too. Whether or not the Dutch guards who 
were helping the English at the end of the seventeenth 
century had a similar privilege in London I do not 
know. 

Late one Saturday evening I watched in a milk shop at 
Breda a conscientious Dutch woman at w^ork. She had 
just finished scrubbing the floor and polishing the brass, 
and was now engaged in laying little paths of paper in case 
any chance customer should come in over night and soil 
the boards before Sunday. I thought as I stood there how 
impossible it would be for an English woman tired with 
the week to sit up like this to clean a shop against the 
next day. Sir William Temple has a pleasant story 
illustrating at once the inherent passion for cleanliness in 
the Dutch women and also theu' old masterfulness. It 
tells how a magistrate, paying an afternoon call, was re- 
ceived at the door by a stout North Holland lass who, 
lest he should soil the floor, took him bodily in her arms and 
carried him to a chair ; sat him in it ; removed his boots ; 
put a pair of slippers on his feet : and then led him to her 
mistress's presence. 

Bergen-op-Zoom has its place in history ; but it is a dull 
town in fact. Nor has it beautiful streets, with the excep- 



GRIMSTON AND REDHEAD 283 

tion of that which leads to the old Gevangenpoort with its 
little painted towers. I must confess that I did not like 
Bergen-op-Zoom. It seemed to me curiously inhospitable 
and critical ; which was of course a wrong attitude to take 
up towards a countryman of Grimston and Redhead. Who 
are Grimston and Redhead ? I seem to hear the reader 
asking. Grimston and Redhead were two members of the 
English garrison when the Prince of Parma besieged 
Bergen-op-Zoom in 1588, and it was their cunning which 
saved the town. Falling intentionally into the Prince's 
hands they affected to inform him of the vulnerability of 
the defences, and outlined a scheme by which his capture 
of a decisive position was practically certain. Having been 
entrusted with the conduct of the attack, they led his men, 
by preconcerted design, into an ambush, with the result 
that the siege was raised. 

All being fair in love and war one should, I suppose, be 
at the feet of these brave fellows ; but I have no enthusiasm 
for that kind of thing. At the same time there is no doubt 
that the Dutch ought to, and therefore I am the more dis- 
tressed by Bergen-op-Zoom's rudeness to our foreign garb. 

Bergen had seen battle before the siege, for when it was 
held by the Spanish, at the beginning of the war, a naval 
engagement was held off" it in the Scheldt, between the 
Spanish fleet and the Beggars of the Sea, whom we are about 
to meet. The victory was to the Beggars. Later, in 1747, 
Bergen was besieged again, this time by the French and 
much more fiercely than by the Spaniards. 

From Bergen-op-Zoom we went to Tholen, passing the 
whitest of windmills on the way. Tholen is an odd little 
ancient town gained by a tramway and a ferry. Head- 
dresses here, as at Bois le Due, are very much over-decorated 
with false flowers ; but in a little shop in one of the narrow 



284 A DUTCH GIRL 

and deserted streets we found some very pretty lace. We 
found, also on the edge of the town, a very merry windmill ; 
and we had lunch at an inn window which commanded 
the harnessing of the many market carts, into every one 
of which climbed a stolid farmer and a wife brimming with 
gossip. 

In the returning steam-tram from Tholen to Bergen- op- 
Zoom was a Dutch maiden. So typical was she that she 
might have been a composite portrait of all Dutch girls of 
eighteen — smooth fair features, a very clear complexion, 
prim clothes. A friend getting in too, she talked ; or 
rather he talked, and she listened, and agreed or dissented 
very quietly, and I had the pleasure of watching how ad- 
mirably adapted is the Dutch feminine countenance for the 
display of the nuances of emotion, the enregistering of 
every thought. Expression after expression flitted across 
her face and mouth like the alternate shadow and sun in 
the Weald on a breezy April day. A French woman's many 
vivacious and eloquent expressions seem to come from 
within ; but the Dutch present a placid sensitised surface 
on which their companions' conversation records the most 
delicate tracery. This girl's little reluctant smiles were 
very charming, and we were at Bergen-op-Zoom again before 
I knew it. 



CHAPTER XIX 

MIDDELBURG 

The friendly Zeelanders — A Spanish heritage — Deceptive Dutch towns 
—The Abbey Hotel— The Abbey of St. Nicholas— Middelburg's 
art — Sentimental songs — The great Tacius — The siege of Middel- 
burg — A round-faced city — When disfigurement is beauty — Green 
paint — Long John — Music in the night — Foolish Betsy — The Stad- 
huis — An Admiral and stuffed birds — The law of the paving-stones 
— Veere — The prey of the sea — A mammoth church — Maximilian's 
cup. 

WITH Middelburg I have associated, for charm, 
Hoorn ; but Middelburg stands first. It is 
serener, happier, more human; while the nature of the 
Zeelander is to the stranger so much more ingratiating 
than that of the North Hollander. The Zeelander — and 
particularly the Wa]cheren islander — has the eccentricity 
to view the stranger as a natural object rather than a 
phenomenon. Flushing being avowedly cosmopolitan does 
not count, but at Middelburg, the capital of Zeeland, you 
may, although the only foreigner there, walk about in the 
oddest clothes and receive no embarrassing attentions. 

It is not that the good people of Walcheren are quicker 
to see where their worldly advantage lies. They are not 
schemers or financiers. The reason resides in a native 
politeness, a heritage, some have conjectured, from their 
Spanish forefathers. One sees hints of Spanish blood also in 
the exceptional flexibility a ad good carriage of the Wal- 

(286) 



^86 THE ABBEY 

cheren women. Whatever the cause of Zeeland's friendh- 
ness, there it is ; and in Middelburg the foreigner wanders at 
ease, almost as comfortable and self-possessed as if he were 
in France. 

And it is the pleasantest town to wander in, and an 
astonishingly large one. A surprising expansiveness, when 
one begins to explore them, is an idiosyncrasy of Dutch 
towns. From the railway, seeing a church spire and a few 
roofs, one had expected only a village ; and behold street 
runs into street until one's legs ache. This is peculiarly 
the case with Gorinchem, which is almost invisible from 
the line ; and it is the case with Middelburg, and Hoorn, 
and many other towns that I do not recall at this moment. 

My advice to travellers in Walcheren is to stay at 
Middelburg rather than at Flushing (they are very nigh 
each other) and to stay, moreover, at the Hotel of the 
Abbey. It is not the best hotel in Holland as regards 
appointment and cuisine ; but it is certainly one of the 
pleasantest in character, and I found none other in so 
fascinating a situation. For it occupies one side of the 
quiet square enclosed by the walls of the Abbey of St. 
Nicholas (or Abdij, as the Dutch oddly call it), and you 
look from your windows through a grove of trees to the 
delicate spires and long low facade of this ancient House 
of God ; which is now given over to the Governor of Zee- 
land, to the library of the Province, and to the Provincial 
Council, who meet in fifteenth century chambers and trans- 
act their business on nouveau art furniture. 

What the Abbey must have been before it was destroyed 
by fire we can only guess ; but one thing we know, and 
that is that among its treasures were paintings by the 
great Mabuse (Jan Gossaert), who once roystered through 
Middelburg's quiet streets. Another artist of Middelburg 






^% 






SENTIMENTAL SONGS S87 

was Adrian van der Venne, who made the quaint drawings 
for Jacob Cats' symbols, of which we have seen something 
in an earlier chapter. But the city has never been a home 
of the arts. Beyond a Httle tapestry, some of which may 
be seen in the stadhuis, and some at the Abbey, it made 
nothing beautiful. From earliest times the Middelburgers 
were merchants — wool merchants and wine merchants 
principally, but always tradespeople and always prosper- 
ous and contented. 

A tentoonstelling (or exhibition) of copper work was in 
progress when I was there last summer; but it was not 
interesting, and I had better have taken the advice of the 
Music Hall manager, in whose grounds it was held, and 
have saved my money. His attitude to repousse work was 
wholly pessimistic, part prejudice against the craft of the 
metal-worker in itself, but more resentment that florins 
should be diverted into such a channel away from comic 
singers and acrobats. Seated at one of the garden tables 
we discussed Dutch taste in varieties. 

The sentimental song, he told me, is a drug in Holland. 
Anything rather than that. No matter how pretty the 
girl may be, she must not sing a sentimental song. But if 
I wished to witness the only way in which a sentimental 
song would " go down," I must visit his performance that 
evening — reserved seats one, fifty, — and hear the great 
Tacius. He drew from his pocket a handbill which was at 
that moment being scattered broadcast over Middelburg. 
It bore the name of this marvel, this solver of the senti- 
mental riddle, and beneath it three interrogation marks. 
The manager winked. "That," he said, "will excite 
interest." 

We went that evening and heard Tacius — a portly 
gentleman in a ball dress and a yellow wig, who after 



288 A ROUND-FACED CITY 

squeaking five-sixths of a love song in a timid falsetto 
which might pass for a woman's voice, roared out the 
balance like a bull. He brought down the house. 

Like most other Dutch towns Middelburg had its period 
of siege. But there was this difference, that Middelburg 
was held by the Spanish and besieged by the Dutch, whereas 
the custom was for the besiegers to be Spanish and the 
besieged Dutch. Middelburg suffered every privation 
common to invested cities, even to the trite consumption 
of rats and dogs, cats and mice. Just as destiTiction 
seemed inevitable — for the Spanish commander Mondragon 
swore to fire it and perish with it rather than submit — a 
compromise was arranged, and he surrendered without 
dishonour, the terms of the capitulation (which, however, 
Spain would not allow him to carry out) being another 
illustration of the wisdom and humanity of William the 
Silent. 

Middelburg has never known a day's suffering since her 
siege. A local proverb says, " Goed rond, goed Zeuwsch " — 
very round, very Zeelandish — and an old writer — so M. 
Havard tells us — describes Middelburg as a "round faced 
city". If by round we mean not only circular but also 
plump and comfortable, we have Middelburg and its sons 
and daughters very happily hit off. Structurally the town 
is round : the streets curve, the Abbey curves ; seen from a 
balloon or the summit of the church tower, the plan of the 
city would reveal itself a circle. And there is a roimdness 
also in the people. They smile roundly, they laugh 
roundly, they live roundly. 

The women and girls of Middelburg are more comely 
and winsome than any in Holland. Their lace caps are 
like driven snow, their cheeks shine like apples. But their 
way with their arms I cannot commend. The sleeve of 



MIDDELBURG'S DAUGHTERS 289 

their bodices ends far above the elbow, and is made so 
tight that the naked arm below expands on attaining its 
liberty, and by constant and intentional friction takes the 
hue of the tomato. What, however, is to our eyes only a 
suggestion of inflammation, is to the Zeelander a beauty. 
While our impulse is to recommend cold cream, the young 
bloods of Middelburg (I must suppose) are holding their 
beating hearts. These are the differences of nations — 
beyond anything dreamed of in Babel. 

The principal work of these ruddy-armed and wide- 
hipped damsels seems to be to carry green pails on a blue 
yoke — and their perfect fitness in Middelburg's cheerful 
and serene streets is another instance of the Dutch cleverness 
in the use of green paint. These people paint their houses 
every year — not in conformity with any written law, but 
upon a universal feeling that that is what should be done. 
To this very pretty habit is largely due the air of fresh 
gaiety that their towns possess. Middelburg is of the 
gayest. Greenest of all, as I have said, is perhaps Zaandam. 
Sometimes they paint too freely, even the trunks of trees 
and good honest statuary coming under the brush. But 
for the most part they paint well. 

It is not alone the cloistral Gothic seclusion in which the 
Abbey hotel reposes that commends it to the wise : there 
is the further allurement of Long John. Long John, or 
De Lange Jan, is the soaring tower of the Abbey church, 
now the Nieuwe Kerk. So long have his nearly 300 feet 
dominated Middelburg — -he was first built in the thirteenth 
century, and rebuilt in the sixteenth — that he has become 
more than a structure of bricks and copper : a thinking 
entity, a tutelary spirit at once the pride and the protector 
of the town. His voice is heard more often than any belfry 
beneath whose shadow I have lain. Holland, as we have 
19 



290 LONG JOHN AND FOOLISH BETSY 

seen, is a land of bells and carillons ; nowhere in the world 
are the feet of Time so dogged ; but Long John is the 
most faithful sleuth of all. He is almost ahead of his 
quarry. He seems to know no law ; he set out, I believe, 
with a commission entitling him to ring his one and forty 
bells every seven and a half minutes, or eight times in the 
hour ; but long since he must have torn up that warranty, 
for he is now his own master, breaking out into little sighs of 
melancholy or wistful music whenever the mood takes him. 
I have never heard such profoundly plaintive airs as his — 
very beautiful, very grave, very deliberate. One cannot 
say more for persistent chimes than this — that at the 
Abbey hotel it is no misfortune to wake in the night. 

Long John has a companion in Foolish Betsy. Foolish 
Betsy is the stadhuis clock, so called (Gekke Betje) from 
her refusal to keep time with the giant : another instance of 
the power which John exerts over the town, even to the 
wounding of chivalry. The Nieuwe Kerk would be nothing 
without its tower — it is one of the barest and least interest- 
ing churches in a country which has reduced to the finest 
point the art of denuding religion of mystery — but the 
stadhuis would still be wonderful even without its Betsy. 
There is nothing else like it in Holland, nothing anywhere 
quite so charming in its shameless happy floridity . I cannot 
describe it : the building is too complicated, too ornate ; I 
can only say that it is wholly captivating and thoroughly 
out of keeping with the Dutch genius — Spanish influence 
again apparent. Beneath the eaves are four and twenty 
statues of the Counts of Holland and Zeeland, and the 
roof is like a mass-meeting of dormer windows. 

In addition to the stadhuis museum, which is dedi- 
cated to the history of Middelburg and Zeeland, the town 
has also a municipal museum, too largely given over to 




HELEXE VAN DER SCHALKE 

GERARD TERBURG 

From the pichtre in the Ryks Ahiseum. 



THE PAINFUL STREETS 291 

shells and stuffed birds, but containing also such human 
relics as the wheel on which Admiral de Ruyter as a boy 
helped his father to make rope, and also the first micro- 
scope and the first telescope, both the work of Zach arias 
Jansen, a Zeeland mathematician. More interesting per- 
haps are the rooms in the old Zeeland manner, corre- 
sponding to the Hindeloopen rooms which we have seen at 
Leeu warden, but lacking theii' cheerful richness of orna- 
mentation. It is certainly a museum that should be 
visited, albeit the stuffed bii'ds weigh heavily on the brow. 
After all, Middelburg's best museum is itself. Its streets 
and houses are a never-ending pleasure. Something glad- 
dens the eye at every turn — a blue and yellow shutter, a' 
red and black shutter, a turret, a daring gable, a knot of 
country people, a fat Zeeland baby, a milk-can rivalling 
the sun, an old woman's lace cap, a young woman's merry 
mouth. Only in two respects is the town unsatisfactory, and- 
both are connected with its streets. The liberty given to 
each householder to erect an iron fence across the pavement 
at each limit of his property makes it necessary to walk in 
the road, and the pave of the road is so rough as to cause 
no slight sufFeiing to any one in thin boots. M. Havard 
has an amusing passage on this topic, in which he says 
that the ancient fifteenth- century punishment for marital 
infidelity, a sin forbidden by the municipal laws no less 
than by Heaven, was the supply by the offending man of 
a certain number of paving stones. After such an ex- 
planation, the genial Frenchman adds, we must not com- 
plain : — 

Nos peres ont peches, nos peres ne sont plus, 
Et c'est nous qui portons la peine de leurs crimes. 

The island of Walcheren is quickly learned. From 
Middelburg one can drive in a day to the chief points of 



292 VEERE 

interest — Westcapelle and Domburg, Veere and Arnemui- 
den. Of these Veere is the jewel — Veere, once Middelburg's 
dreaded rival, and in its possession of a clear sea-way and 
harbour her superior, but now forlorn. For in the seven- 
teenth century Holland's ancient enemy overflowed its 
barriers, and the greater part of Veere was blotted out in 
a night. What remains is a mere symbol of the past; 
but there is enough to loiter in with perfect content, for 
Veere is unique. Certainly no little town is so good to 
approach — with the friendliness of its red roofs before one 
all the way, the unearthly hugeness of its church and the 
magic of its stadhuis tower against the blue. 

The church, which is visible from all parts of the island, 
is immense, in itself an indication of what a city Veere 
must have been. It rises like a mammoth from the flat. 
Only the east end is now used for services ; the vast 
remainder, white and naked, is given up to bats and the 
handful of workmen that the slender restoration funds 
make it possible to employ. For there is some idea of 
Veere's church being one day again in perfect repair ; but 
that day will not be in our time. The ravages of the sea 
only emptied it : the sea does not desecrate. It was 
Napoleon who disgraced the church by converting it into 
barracks. 

Other relics of Veere's past are the tower at the har- 
bour mouth (its fellow-tower is beneath the sea) and the 
beautifully grave Scotch house on the quay, once the 
centre of the Scottish wool trade of these parts. 

The stadhuis also remains, a dainty distinguished 
structure which might be the infant daughter of the 
stadhuis at Middelburg. Its spire has a slender aerial 
grace ; on its facade are statues of the Lords of Veere and] 
their Ladies. Within is a little museum of an tiquities, 



MAXIMILIAN'S GOBLET 293 

one of whose most interesting possessions is the entry in 
the Veere register, under the date July 2nd, 1608, of the 
marriage of Hugo Grotius with Maria Reygersbergh of 
Veere, whom we have seen at Loevenstein assisting in her 
husband's escape from prison. The museum is in the 
charge of a blond custodian, a descendant of sea kings, 
whose pride in the golden goblet which Maximilian of Bur- 
gundy, Veere's first Marquis, gave to the town in 1551, 
is almost paternal. He displays it as though it were a 
sacred relic, and narrates the story of Veere's indignation 
when a millionaire attempted to buy it, so feelingly as to 
fortify and complete one's suspicions that money after all 
is but dross and the love of it the root of evil. 



CHAPTER XX 

FLUSHING 

Middelburg once more — The Flushing baths — Shrimps and chivalry — A 
Dutch boy — Charles V. at Souburg — Flushing and the Spanish yoke 
— Philip and William the Silent — The capture of Brill — A far-reaching 
drunken impulse — Flushing's independence — Admiral de Ruyter — 
England's Revenge— The Middelburg kermis — The aristocracy of 
avoirdupois — The end. 

IT is wiser I think to stay at Middelburg and visit 
Flushing from there than to stay at Flushing. One 
may go by train or tram. In hot weather the steam-tram 
is the better way, for then one can go direct to the baths 
and bathe in the stillest arm of the sea that I know. Here 
I bathed on the hottest day of last year, 1904, among 
merry albeit considerable water nymphs and vivacious men. 
These I found afterwards should have dwelt in the water 
for ever, for they emerged, dried and dressed, from 
the machines, something less than ordinary Batavians. 
I perhaps carried disillusionment also. 

For safe bathing the Flushing baths could not well be 
excelled, but I never knew shore so sandy. To rid one's 
self of sand is almost an impossibility. With each step it 
over-tops one's boots. 

Returning to Middelburg from Flushing one evening, in 
the steam-tram, we found ourselves in a compartment filled 
with happy country people, most of them making for the 

(294) 



SOUBURG ' 295 

kermis, then in full swing in the Middelburg market place. 
A pedlar of shrimps stood by the door retailing little 
pennyworths, and nothing would do but the countryman 
opposite me must buy some for his sweetheart. When he 
had bought them he was for emptying them in her lap, but 
I tendered the wrapper of my book just in time : an act of 
civility which brought out all his native friendliness. He 
offered us shrimps, one by one, first peeling them with kindly 
fingers of extraordinary blackness, and we ate enough to 
satisfy him that we meant well : and then j ust as we reached 
Middelburg, he gave me a cigar and walked all the way to 
the Abbey with me, watching me smoke it. It was an 
ordeal ; but I hope, for the honour of England, that I 
carried it through successfully and convinced him that 
an Englishman knows what to do with courtesy when he 
finds it. 

In the same tram and on the very next seat to us was 
the pleasantest little boy that I think I ever saw : a perfect 
miniature Dutchman, with wide black trousers terminating 
in a point, pearl buttons, a tight black coat, a black hat, 
and golden neck links after the Zeeland habit. He was 
perhaps four, plump and red and meny, and his mother, who 
nursed his baby sister, was immensely proud of him. Some 
one pressed a twopenny bit into his hand as he left the car, 
and I watched him telling the great news to half a dozen of 
the women who were waiting by the side of the road, while 
his face shone like the setting sun. 

They got off at Souburg, the little village between 
Flushing and Middelburg where Charles V. was living in 
1556, after his abdication, before he sailed for his last 
home. It is odd to have two such associations with 
Souburg — the weary emperor putting off the purple, and 
the little Dutch boer bursting joUily through black velvet. 



S96 DECLARATION OF WAR 

Flushing played a great part in the great war. It was 
from Flushing that Charles V. sailed in 1 556 ; from Flush- 
ing that Philip II. sailed in 1559 ; neither to return. It was 
Flushing that heard Philip's farewell to William of Orange, 
which in the light of after events may be called the de- 
claration of war that was to release the Netherlands from 
the tyranny of Spain and Rome. " As Philip was proceed- 
ing on board the ship which was to bear him for ever from 
the Netherlands, his eyes lighted upon the Prince. His 
displeasure could no longer be restrained. With angry 
face he turned upon him, and bitterly reproached him for 
having thwarted all his plans by means of his secret in- 
trigues. William replied with humility that everything 
which had taken place had been done through the regular 
and natural movements of the states. Upon this the King, 
boiling with rage, seized the Prince by the wrist, and, 
shaking it violently, exclaimed in Spanish, ' No los estados, 
ma vos, vos, vos ! ' — Not the estates, but you, you, you ! — 
repeating thrice the word ' vos,' which is as disrespectful 
and uncourteous in Spain as ' toi ' in French." 

That was 26th August, 1559. Philip's fleet consisted of 
ninety ships, victualled, among other articles, with fifteen 
thousand capons, and laden with such spoil as tapestry and 
silks, much of which had to be thrown overboard in a storm 
to lighten the labom-ing vessels. It seemed at one time as 
if the fleet must founder, but Philip reached Spain in safety, 
and hastened to celebrate his escape, and emphasise his 
policy of a universal religion, by an extensive auto dafe. 

Flushing did not actually begin the war, in 1572, after the 
capture of Brill at the mouth of the Maas, by the Water 
Beggars under De la Marck, but it was the first town to 
respond to that invitation of revolt against Alva and Spain. 
The foundations of the Dutch Republic may have been 



ALVA'S SPECTACLES 297 

laid at Brill, but it was the moral support of Flushing that 
established them. 

The date of the capture of Brill was April 1st, and 
Alva, who was then at Brussels, suffered tortures from the 
Belgian wits. The word Brill, by a happy chance, signifies 
spectacles, and a couplet was sung to the effect that 

On April Fool's Day 

Duke Alva's spectacles were stolen away ; 

while, says Motley, a caricature was circulated depicting 
Alva's spectacles being removed from his nose by De la 
Marck, while the Duke uttered his habitual comment 
" 'Tis nothing. . 'Tis nothing." 

What, however, began as little more than the desperate 
deed of some hungry pirates, to satisfy their immediate 
needs, was soon turned into a very far-reaching " some- 
thing," by the action of Flushing, whose burghers, under 
the Seigneur de Herpt, on hearing the news of the re- 
bellion of Brill, drove the Spanish garrison from the town. 
A number of Spanish ships chancing to arrive on the same 
day, bringing reinforcements, were just in time to find the 
town in arms. Had they landed, the whole revolt might 
have been quelled, but a drunken loafer of the town, in 
return for a pot of beer, offered to fire a gun at the fleet 
from the ramparts. He was allowed to do so, and without 
a word the fleet fell into a panic and sailed away. The 
day was won. It might almost be said that that shot — 
that pot of beer — secured the freedom of the Netherlands. 
Let this be remembered when John Barleycorn is before 
his many judges. 

A little later Brill sent help, and Flushing's independ- 
ence was secure. Motley describes this band of assistants 
in a picturesque passage : — 



298 PACHECO 

" The expedition seemed a fierce but whimsical masquer- 
ade. Every man in the little fleet was attired in the 
gorgeous vestments of the plundered churches, in gold- 
embroidered cassocks, glittering mass-garments, or the 
more sombre cowls and robes of Capuchin friars. So sped 
the early standard bearers of that ferocious liberty which 
had sprung from the fires in which all else for which men 
cherish their fatherland had been consumed. So swept 
that resolute but fantastic band along the placid estuaries 
of Zeeland, waking the stagnant waters with their wild 
beggar songs and cries of vengeance. 

"That vengeance found soon a distinguished object. 
Pacheco, the chief engineer of Alva, who had accompanied 
the Duke in his march from Italy, who had since earned a 
world-wide reputation as the architect of the Antwerp 
citadel, had been just despatched in haste to Flushing to 
complete the fortress whose construction had been so long 
delayed. Too late for his work, too soon for his safety, the 
ill-fated engineer had arrived almost at the same moment 
with Treslong and his crew. He had stepped on shore, 
entirely ignorant of all which had transpired, expecting to 
be treated with the respect due to the chief commandant of 
the place, and to an ofiicer high in the confidence of the 
Governor-general. He found himself surrounded by an 
indignant and threatening mob. The unfortunate Itahan 
understood not a word of the opprobrious language ad- 
dressed to him, but he easily comprehended that the 
authority of the Duke was overthrown. 

" Observing De Ryk, a distinguished partisan officer and 
privateersman of Amsterdam, whose reputation for bravery 
and generosity was known to him, he approached him, and 
drawing a seal ring from his finger kissed it, and handed it 
to the rebel chieftain. By this dumb-show he gave him to 




ELIZABETH BAS 

KEMI5RANDT 

the pichiTi ill thi Ryks Mitsezar. 



AND HIS FATE 299 

understand that he relied upon his honor for the treat- 
ment due to a gentleman. De Ryk understood the appeal, 
and would willingly have assured him, at least, a soldier's 
death, but he was powerless to do so. He arrested him, 
that he might be protected from the fury of the rabble ; 
but Treslong, who now commanded in Flushing, was 
especially incensed against the founder of the Antwerp 
citadel, and felt a ferocious desire to avenge his brother's 
murder upon the body of his destroyer's favourite. 

"Pacheco was condemned to be hanged upon the very 
day of his arrival. Having been brought forth from his 
prison, he begged hard but not abjectly for his life. He 
offered a heavy ransom, but his enemies were greedy for 
blood, not for money. It was, however, difficult to find an 
executioner. The city hangman was absent, and the pre- 
judice of the country and the age against the vile pro- 
fession had assuredly not been diminished during the five 
horrible years of Alva's administration. Even a condemned 
murderer, who lay in the town gaol, refused to accept his 
life in recompence for performing the office. It should 
never be said, he observed, that his mother had given birth 
to a hangman. When told, however, that the intended 
victim was a Spanish officer, the malefactor consented to 
the task with alacrity, on condition that he might after- 
wards kill any man who taunted him with the deed. 

" Arrived at the foot of the gallows, Pacheco complained 
bitterly of the disgraceful death designed for him. He 
protested loudly that he came of a house as noble as that 
of Egmont or Hoorn, and was entitled to as honourable 
an execution as theirs had been. ' The sword ! the sword ! ' 
he frantically exclaimed, as he struggled with those who 
guarded him. His language was not understood, but the 
name of Egmont and Hoorn inflamed still more highly the 



300 DE RUYTER 

rage of the rabble, while his cry for the sword was falsely 
interpreted by a rude fellow who had happened to possess 
himself of Pacheco's rapier, at his capture, and who now 
paraded himself with it at the gallows foot. ' Never fear 
for your sword, Seiior,' cried this ruffian ; * your sword is 
safe enough, and in good hands. Up the ladder with you, 
Senor ; you have no further use for your sword.' Pacheco, 
thus outraged, submitted to his fate. He mounted the 
ladder with a steady step, and was hanged between two 
other Spanish officers. 

" So perished miserably a brave soldier, and one of the 
most distinguished engineers of his time ; a man whose 
character and accomplishments had certainly merited for 
him a better fate. But while we stigmatize as it desei-ves 
the atrocious conduct of a few Netherland partisans, we 
should remember who first unchained the demon of inter- 
national hatred in this unhappy land, nor should it ever be 
forgotten that the great leader of the revolt, by word, 
proclamation, example, by entreaties, threats, and condign 
punishment, constantly rebuked and, to a certain extent, re- 
strained the sanguinary spirit by which some of his followers 
disgraced the noble cause which they had espoused." 

Flushing's hero is De Ruyter, whose rope-walk wheel we 
saw at Middelburg, and whose truculent lineaments have so 
often frowned at us from the w^alls of picture gallery and 
stadhuis throughout the country — almost without excep- 
tion from the hand of Ferdinand Bol, or a copyist. 

Scratch a sea-dog and you find a pirate; De Ruyter, 
who stands in stone for all time by Flushing harbour, 
lackiDg the warranty of war would have been a Paul Jones 
beyond eulogy. You can see it in his strong brows, his 
determined mouth, his every line. It is only two hundred 
and thirty-seven years, only seven generations, since he was 



THE MIDDELBURG KERMIS 301 

in the Thames with his fleet, and London was panic- 
stricken. No enemy has been there since. The English 
had their revenge in 1809, when they bombarded Flushing 
and reduced it to only a semblance of what it had been. 
Among the beautiful buildings which our cannon balls 
destroyed was the ancient stadhuis. Hence it is that 
Flushing's stadhuis to-day is a mere recent upstart. 

Flushing does little to amuse its visitors after the sun 
has left the sea ; and we were very glad of the excuse offered 
by the Middelburg kermis to return to our inland city 
each afternoon. The Middelburg kermis is a particularly 
merry one. The stalls and roundabouts fill the market 
square before the stadhuis, packed so closely that the re- 
volving horses nearly carry the poffertje restaurants round 
with them. The Dutch roundabouts, by the way, still, 
like the English, retain horses : they have not, like the 
French, as I noticed at three fairs in and about Paris last 
autumn, taken to pigs and rabbits. 

I examined the Middelburg kermis very thoroughly. 
Few though the exhibits were, they included two fat 
women. Their booths stood on opposite sides of the square, 
all the fun of the fair between them. In the west was 
Mile. Jeanne ; in the east the Princess Sexiena. Jeanne 
was French, Sexiena came from the Fatherland. Both, 
though rivals, used the same poster : a picture of a lady, 
enormous, decolletee, highly- coloured, stepping into a fiacre, 
to the cocher's intense alarm. Before one inspected the 
rival giantesses this community of advertisement had seemed 
to be a mistake ; after, its absurdity was only too apparent, 
for although the Princess was colossal. Mile. Jeanne was 
more so. Mile. Jeanne should therefore have employed an 
artist to make an independent allurement. 

Both also displayed outside the booths a pair of corsets, 



802 THE GIANTESSES 

but here, I fancy, the advantage was with Mile. Jeanne, 
although such were the distractions of the square that 
it was difficult to keep relative sizes in mind as one 
crossed it. 

We visited the Princess first and found her large enough. 
She gasped on a dais — it was the hottest week of the year. 
She was happy, she said, except in such warmth. She was 
not married : Princes had sighed for her in vain. She rode 
a bicycle, she assured us, and enjoyment in the incredulity 
of her hearers was evidently one of her pleasures. Her 
manager listened impatiently, for our conversation in- 
terrupted his routine ; he then took his oath that she was 
not padded, and bade her exhibit her leg. She did so, and 
it was like the mast of a ship. 

I dropped five cents into her plate and passed on to Mile. 
Jeanne. The Princess had been large enough ; Mile. Jeanne 
was larger. She wore her panoply of flesh less like a flower 
than did her rival. Her expression was less placid ; she 
panted distressfully as she fanned her bulk. But in con- 
versation she relaxed. She too was happy, except in such 
heat. She neither rode a bicycle nor walked — save two or 
three steps. As her name indicated, she too was unmarried, 
although, her manager interjected, few wives could make 
a better omelette. But men are cowards, and such for- 
tresses very formidable. 

As we talked, the manager, who had entered the booth 
as blase an entrepreneur as the Continent holds, showed 
signs of animation. In time he grew almost enthusiastic 
and patted Mlie.'s arms with pride. He assisted her to 
exhibit her leg quite as though its glories were also his. 
The Princess's leg had been like the mast of a ship ; this 
was like the trunk of a Burnham beech. 

And here, at Flushing, we leave the country. I should 



BELGIUM UNATTAINABLE 303 

have liked to have steamed down the Scheldt to Antwerp 
on one of the ships that continually pass, if only to be 
once more among the friendly francs with their notice- 
able purchasing power, and to saunter again through the 
Plantin Museum among the ghosts of old printers, and 
to stand for a while in the Museum before Van Eyck's 
delicious drawing of Saint Barbara. But it must not be. 
This is not a Belgian book, but a Dutch book ; and here 
it ends. 



INDEX 



Aanspreker, The, lo 

Aertz, Jan Terween, 36 

A Kempis, Thomas, 103, 254 

Alkmaar, 206-213, 266 

Alva, Duke of, 140, 141, 210, 258, 297 

Amsterdam, 153-183, 185, 261 

Anabaptists, 113 

Antwerp, 303 

Arminians, 37 

Arnheim, 261-268 



B 



Baerle, Van, 266, 268 

Barbizon Painters, 68, 70-72, 180 

Barges, 5, 6, 231 

Barneveldt, 38, 72-75 

Beckford, Wilham, quoted, 121 

Beggars of the Sea, 297 

Begijnen, The, 164 

Belloc, Mr. Hilaire, quoted, 61 

Bells, 61, 166, 289 

Berchem, Nicolas, 148 

Bergen-op-Zoom, 42, 204, 283 

Berlikum, 248 

Bilderdyk, 269 

Binnenhof, The, 72 

Biographical Memoirs of Extraord\ 

nary Painters, 121 
Bol, Ferdinand, 13, 35 
Bolsward, 232 
Bommel, 280 
Boompoel, The, 249 
Bos, Mr., 242 
Bosboom, Johannes, 14, 69 
Bosch, The, 80 
Boxum, 248 
Boymans Museum, 13 

20 



Breda, 281 

Breitner, G. H., 36, 158 

Brill, 297 

Broek, 197 

Brouwer, Adrian, 70, 14J 



Canals, 2, 5, 6, 154 
Cats, Jacob, 85-go, 267 
Chambers of Rhetoric, 263 
Charlemagne's Prayer, 278 
Charles V., 295 
Cheese, 207 

Christening Customs, 227 
Coen, Jan Pieters, 215 
Colloqnia Peripatetica, 103 
Congress of Dort, 36-37 
Corbeille, Mr., quoted, 45 
Cornellissen, Jan, 201 
Corot, 71, 181 
Coryate, Thomas, 84 
Cuyp, Albert, 13, 33, 44, 240 



Dam, The, 159 

Darnley, Lord, 219 

Davies quoted, 37, 38, 73, 75, 163 

Death, 10 

De Bossu, 215 

De Hooch, Peter, 12, 179, 182 

Dekker, Edward Douwes, i6g 

Delft, 48-62 

De Ruyter, 218, 219, 291, 300 

De Sonoy, 215 

Deventer, 254 

De Witt, Cornelius, 39, 75 

John, 75 

Diaz, 71 

(305) 



806 



INDEX 



Dircksz, Peter, 201 
Dirckzoon, Cornelius, igg, 216 
Dobson, Mr. Austin, quoted, 86 
Doelens, 251 
Dogs, 238 
Dokkum, 245 
Dordrecht, 30-40 
Dou, Gerard, 118, 122 
Dumas, Alexandre, 39, 250 
Dutch Architecture, 45 

— Books, 79 

— Chemists, 11 

— Churches, 44, 134, 164 

— Civility, 26, 240 

— Cleanliness, 5, 282 
" — Courage," 29 

— Evening Habits, 79 

— Gardening, 129 

— Houses, 154, 181, 229 

— Inns, 18, 185 

— Language, 268, 274 

— Love-making, 198, 228 

— Manners to strangers, 27, 42, 240 

— Morality, 260 

— Music Halls, 165 

— National Anthem, 279 
" — News," 28 

— Painting, 173-175, 181 

— Phlegm, 199 y 

— Precision, 63 

— Railways, 184 

— Religion, 21 

— Scenery, 2 

— Servants, 9 

— Steam-trams, 94 

— Weddings, 161 

— Wives, 162 
Dykes, 64, 220, 241 



E 



Earle, John, 24 

Edam, 200 

Eisinga, Eisa, 244, 247 

Engelbert L, 281 

English Schole-Master, The, 24, 269 

Enkhuisen, 224 

Erasmus, 11, 103, 135, 252 

Evelyn, John, quoted, 102 



Fabritius, 58 



Fell, R., quoted, 26, 144, 233 
Feltham, Owen, 24, 155 
Florin, The, 7 
Flushing, 294 
Fodor Museum, 183 
Franeker, 244 

Frederick, Don, 137, i8g, 209 
Friesland, 229, 235, 245 
Frogs, 241 



George IL, 280 

Gerard, Balthazar, 50 

Gevangenpoort, The, 78 

Giantesses, The, 301 

Goldsmith, Oliver, 97-102 

Gomarians, 37 

Gorinchem, 40-43 

Gosse, Mr. Edmund, quoted, 266- 

267 
Gothamites, 256 
Gouda, 18 

Goyen, Jan van, 109 
Grimston and Redhead, 283 
Groningen, 251 
Grotius, 41, 55, 293 
Guelder, The (see Florin) 
Gutenberg, 136 



H 



Haarlem, 128-152 

Hagthorpe, John, 22 

Hague, The, 63-84 

Hals, Dirck, 147 

— Frans, 145-152, 176 

Handel, 144 

Haring, John, 215, 217 

Harlingen, 242 

Hasselaer, Kenau, 143 

Havard, Henri, quoted, 59, 171, 221, 

224, 227, 242, 257, 291 
Heemstra, Van, 231 
Helder, The, 220 

Heist, Bartholomew van der, 147, 176 
Helvoet, 280 
Heranguiere, 281 
Hertzogenbosch, 279 
Heyden, Van der, 43 
Hillegom, 128 
Hilversum, 10, 186 
Hindeloopen, 229 



INDEX 



S07 



Hobbema, 13 

Hoboken, Mr. Van, 16 

Hogarth, 112 

Hooch, Peter de (see De Hooch) 

Hood, Thomas, 17, 264 

Hooft, Peter Cornellissen, 194 

Hook of Holland, i 

Hoorn, 213-220 

Hortensius, 192 

Hotel Porters, 222 

Howell, James, 82 

Huilebalk, The, 10 

Huizen, 188 

Huyghens, Constantin, 85, 265 



I 



Ireland, Samuel, quoted, 26, 60, 120, 

166, 178, 233 
Israels, Joseph, 14, 145, 251 



Jan of Leyden, 113-118 
Jansen, Zacharias, 291 
Jaureguy, 50 
Juffer Lysse, 249 



Kampen, 255 
Katwyk, 92 
Kermis, The, 104, 301 
Kever, Trijntje, 201 
Knipperdollinch, 115 
Koster, Laurens, 136 



Lange Jacob, 231 
Laren, 187 
Leeuwarden, 235-249 
— Guide-book, 245 
Leeuwenhock, Antony van, 57 
Lennep, Mr. Van, quoted, 152 
Leyden, 94-127 
Lighthouse, The, 220 
Lohengrin, 277 
Longfellow, H. W., 149, 263 
Love-making, 198, 228 
Lucas van Leyden, 123 
Luther, 135, 252 



Mabuse, 286 
Maes, Nicolas, 34, 178 
Mandeville, Bernard, 40 
Maris, James, 14, 181 
— Matthew, 14, 145, 181 
Marken, 195 
Marnix, Elizabeth, 57 
Marssum, 247 
Marvell, Andrew, 19-22 
Mary, Queen of Scots, 219 
Maurice, Prince, 37, 74 
Mauritshuis, The, 66-69 
Mauve, Anton, 14, 187, 205 
Max Havelaar, 167 
Maximilian of Burgundy, 293 

Medemblik, 223 

Mendoza quoted, 193 

Mermaid, The, 202 

Mesdag, H. W., 14, 70, 251 

Mesdag Museum, 70 

Metsu, Gabriel, 121 

Michel, Georges, 71 

Middelburg, 285, 301 

Mieris, Franz van, 120 

— William van, 120 

Monnickendam, 198 

Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley, 
quoted, 8, 277 

Motley quoted, 50-54, 124, 137-143. 
189, 194, 209, 215, 216, 258, 
296, 298 

Muiden, 194 

Muiderburg, 194 

" Multatuli," 167 

Munster, 114 

Music Halls, 287 



N 



Naarden, 188 
Nieuwediep, 220 
Noordwyk, 93 
Nottingham, 277 
Nymwegen, 276 



Osterlen, the shipowner, 202 
Overbury, Sir Thomas, 25 



508 



INDEX 



Pacheco, 298 

Paint, Green, 204, 245, 2890 

Parma, Prince of, 50 

Pearson, Prof. Karl, quoted, 113 

Peat, 253 

Peter the Great, 205 

Philip II., 296 

Phillips, Sir Richard, 28 

Planetarium, The, 244 

Poffertjes, 105 

Poppema, Bauck, 248 

Postcards, Picture, 260 

Potter, Paul, 66, 224 

Printing, 136 

Prior, Matthew, 81 

Proverbs, 279 

Purmerend, 203 



Queen-Mother, 16 
R 

Radbod, 223 

Regent Pieces, 146 

Rembrandt, 64, 66, 107, 118, iig, 

157, 176-178, 183 
Rhine, The, 3, 276 
Rotterdam, 1-18 
Ruisdael, Jacob van, 149 
Ryks Museum, 175-180 
Rynsburg, 92 



St. Jacobie Parochie, 238, 240 

Santvoort, Dirck van, 133 

Schalcken, Godfried, 119 

Scheffer, Ary, 35 

Scheveningen, go-92 

Schouten, Willem, 215 

Scorel, Jan van, 14, 46, 

Sidney, Sir Philip, 257 

Sieges, 137, 209, 283, 2( 

Six, Jan, 182 

Sneek, 231 

Souburg, 295 

Spanish War, 37, 124, 137, 189, 209, 

215, 258, 280, 281, 283, 288, 

296 



147 



200 

CP 



Spinoza, 92 

Stadelijks Museum, 181 

Stavoren, 226 

Steen, Jan, iog-113 

Steengracht, Baron, his pictures, 70 

Stoofjes, 22 

Stork, The, 15, 240 

Suasso Rooms, 181 

Synod of Dort, 37 



Tasman, Abel, 215 

Temple, Sir William, 25, 224, 282 

Terburg, Gerard, 179, 253 

Texel, 223, 262 

Tholen, 204, 284 

Through Noord - Holland quoted, 

133, 136, 144, 166, 187, 194, 197, 

202, 203, 208 
Tobacco, 232 
Tortures, 78 
Trams, 159 
Tromp, Admiral, 56 
Tiilipe Noire, La, 39, 129 
Tulips, 128 



u 



Urk, 257 
Utrecht, 43-47 



Veere, 292 

Venice, 33, 153 

Venne, Van der, 287 

Vermeer of Delft, 12, 58, 67-68, 17: 

Villa Names, 132 

Visscher, Anna, 266 

— Roemer, 262 

— Tesselschade, 262 
Volendam, 202 
Vondel, 214, 265 
Vyver, The, 66 

W 

Wafelen, 105 
Walcheren, 285 
Waxworks, 259 
Werf, Van der, 124 
Whitman, Walt, 4 



R" -7.4 



INDEX 



309 



Widow's Corn, The, 227 
Wild Girl of Kampen, The, 255 
Wilhelmina, Queen, 160 
William the Silent, 49-55, 127, 213, 

288, 296 
Windmills, 204 
Wine, 8 
Woudrichem, 40 



Zaandam, 204 

Zaandvoort, 132 

Zeeland, 285 

Zutphen, 257 

Zuyder Zee, 199, 202, 214, 226 

Zwolle, 253 



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